You Can Stop Drinking Now

Anyone who has an addiction to alcohol knows intimately what the word addiction means. It means an ongoing struggle with alcohol. Drinking is always in the back of your mind, and the amazing fact of addiction is you will pick up a drink when you don’t want one. It’s an ongoing war and the alcoholic  on his or her own probably won’t win, because alcohol is so powerful.

You wake up in the morning declaring to yourself you will not drink that day. You have never been so serious about anything in your life. Your resolve stays strong until later when you start feeling out of sorts and maybe you are shaking. Your thinking is clouded and you feel incapable of handling your everyday life.  Alcohol has moved from the back of your mind to the forefront.  You think about drinking all of the time.

You may make it a few days sober. That gives you just enough time to get a look at the effects that your drinking career has left behind. You have a lot of work to do to straighten it all out. It’s like starting a new life and it’s overwhelming, and on top of that you are depressed.  Where do you start? It can start with something as simple as cleaning up your environment, but that’s only the beginning. There is the career or lack of one to deal with.  Your finances are a mess. Your relationships are damaged and your health isn’t great.  All this adds up to more than you can cope with, so you say to yourself  ”I can’t deal with this” and pick up a drink.  An alcoholic will always pick up a drink when they decide that they’ve had enough, they just can’t handle it, and then they throw in the towel.

As hard as it is for an alcoholic in the early stages to believe, this is an endless cycle that can go on for years. Some times will be better than others, but you will reach that same point over and over. You pull yourself together, stop drinking for a time, and then start again.  Your body is addicted to alcohol and your mind has developed a dependence on it.  You have actually developed a relationship with alcohol.  It takes the edge off.  It helps you cope with life. It is perceved as being a friend in many ways.  And there is always going to be that part of you that really doesn’t want to stop drinking.  That’s not an easy combination to beat.  But most people with an alcohol addiction can get sober with some kind of help to put them over the top.