You Can Stop Drinking Now

Thousands, or more likely, millions of people are currently suffering with alcoholism, so you are certainly not alone.

When you are drinking every day and in many cases exerting enormous effort to hide your drinking, it brings on the feeling that you are utterly alone in this struggle with alcoholism, particularly if you are surrounded by people who don’t have the problem, let alone understand it.

You can’t stop drinking alcohol and there are feelings of shame, guilt and self-loathing that go along with the territory.  Alcohol also gives you a grim outlook on life and can bring on feelings of fear that aren’t necessarily warranted in the situations in your everyday life.

When you are constantly drinking, you are living an epic in your mind.  Everything is enormous and overwhelming.

Above all, if you don’t remember anything else, remember this:  You are not a bad person, you are a sick person.  Your drinking problem is for a lack of a better term, is a layer or blanket over the person you used to be.  When you sober up you can become that person again. That cheerful, upbeat person who had it going on and had a lot to offer.

Also, when we are in the depths of drinking, we tend to take on the label “I am an alcoholic”. Granted you may fit the bill at that point in time, but there are many other good aspects of you as well - you may be a smart, caring, competent, giving person, you are someone’s son, daughter, mother or father, and you have many good traits.  So don’t fall into the trap of labeling yourself as an alcoholic to the exclusion of all of the other great traits you possess.

There is a very old saying. “You sober up a horse thief and you’ve got a sober horse thief.”  Nothing could be truer.  Whoever you were before the alcohol took over your life is the person you will be again when you become able to walk away from alcohol for good.

Don’t forget you are not alone in your alcoholism. There are thousands upon thousands of good people dealing with this disease every day, and waking up in the same shape and state of mind you do.  So even though it sometimes seems that you are the only person on the planet going through this nightmare, remember, nothing could be further from the truth.

- Max

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