Addiction Recovery

Effects Of Alcohol Abuse

May 4th, 2008 Filed under: Uncategorized — Addiction Recovery Author

Have you ever thought of your relationship with alcohol as being an affair? Do you remember the first person you ever fell in love with? Do you remember how it felt, the butterflies in your stomach, how you wanted to be with the other person every minute of the day? And how anyone or anything which got in the way would be more than a minor irritation?

It sounds a bit similar to your relationship with alcohol doesn’t it? Relationships can go bad and even though they no longer good for us, still we cling and are unable to let go. The end of a relationship brings pain and the cycle of loss, anger,sadness and mourning commences. However once we’ve been through this cycle things start to get better and we move on until we find a new relationship and the former has become one of life’s lessons which we have learned by.

It’s not going to be easy to stop drinking,but if you can do this you’ll become a better and stronger person and you’ll gain respect from your family, colleagues and peers. When you quit, the world will become your oyster and you will have done wonders for your self-esteem. Just think about all the things that you’ll be capable of, quitting will make you more motivated, you will become a person who takes action and gets things done, it sounds exciting doesn’t it?

Think carefully before joining Alcoholics Anonymous, I mean if this was a relationship with a person would you really want a large group of people knowing all your deepest secrets and your vulnerabilities? It may feel liberating to off load all this personal baggage, but Alcoholics Anonymous is a club and if you join them you have to abide by their rules, there is no room for flexibility. the relapse rate in alcoholics anonymous is considerably high and it is extremely likely that you will return to your addiction.

Alcoholism forces you to put the important things in life in second place, your relationships with alcohol is more important than your family, your children, your job, your wife or husband and your hobbies. You really need to get things in perspective because otherwise the only relationship that you will have in your life will be the one with alcohol because you will lose everything else.

The worst part of your affair with alcohol is your constant preoccupation with it. You think about alcohol when you wake in the morning and throughout the rest of the day. Maybe you don’t start drinking first thing in the morning but it’s in your thoughts with all the time. You may long for the day to end, just so you can have a couple of drinks to unwind, you may even believe that you have your alcoholism in control, but it’s more likely the other way round, alcohol is the one in control and to believe otherwise is to deceive yourself.

I want you to be completely honest with yourself, grab a pen and paper and write down all the things that you love about alcohol. Then write down all of the bad experiences you’ve had as a result of your drinking, all the time you made a fool of yourself, all the people you hurt as a result of your drinking etc

Once you have completed your list, look at it again and make a new list of all the reasons why you should continue to drink and all the reasons why you shouldn’t. If you have been honest, the new list you have should serve to encourage you to stop drinking, if this is not the case then you are not ready to stop yet. Give it a try doing so may give you the motivation to stop drinking for once and for all.

Rob Maggs is a Software Developer and Web Designer based on the Isle Of Anglesey in the United Kingdom. A reformed alcoholic dedicated to self improvement and personal development. His current projects include Hypnosis toolkit and How to stop drinking (Assistance for alcoholics).