Alcohol

Christmas Survival Guide For A Recovering Alcohol

December 4, 2018admin Alcohol

Christmas parties are very special. We relax. We enjoy ourselves. We make friends with colleagues we hardly know. I do all of that even though I haven’t drunk alcohol since 12th October 1984.

I get heavily stuck into fizzy water. This has a number of very clear advantages. I do remember what I was doing, I don’t have a sore head and I don’t have to apologise to anyone. But, more significantly, I enjoy myself much more than I did in the old days when my reduced inhibitions caused mayhem.

I don’t drink at this time of year, or any other, because I’m not a very good drinker. I drink alcoholically. Once I start I don’t know when – or how – to stop. The drink takes me over.

The festive season is much less dangerous for me nowadays than it used to be. Today all I have to watch out for is the drunken or drugged behaviour of other people. And I have a clear head that enables me to make careful judgement.

I enjoy conversations where I’m not slurring my words or repeating myself. Nobody frowns at me or walks away.

I feel free of the need to make escape plans because there’s nothing I want to escape from. I enjoy being in sociable company until such time as other people, through their alcohol or drug consumption, become unsociable. Then I go home and read a book or play my electronic keyboard (with my headphones on so I don’t disturb anyone else).

Previously, after a splendid party, I might not remember how I got home. And I certainly wouldn’t be capable of reading a book or playing a piano. And I might disturb the neighbours by singing The Hallelujah Chorus or Eskimo Nell at the top of my voice.

I stopped drinking because I wasn’t very good at it. Previously I thought I was a bad man but a good drinker. Now I recognise that I’m capable of being a good man but I’ll always be a bad drinker. So I don’t start.

I spend my time doing things I’m good at. Nowadays I’m a responsible husband and an entertaining companion. I thought I was always that… well… most of the time. But the reality was a far cry from my recollection. In the old days, when I was told by my wife and other people that my behaviour had not been my best, I wondered what they were talking about. Today there is no confusion.

I anticipate having a sober Christmas this year because I’ve had one every year for the last 34 years. I remember them clearly. They’ve been a lot of fun. Nowadays the holiday season usually sees my wife and me in a quiet hotel on a pleasant island, enjoying ourselves in our own special ways, hiking, going to restaurants, listening to music or doing puzzles. We work hard enough during the rest of the year. This is how we relax.

Other people may find this form of relaxation to be a very strange description of an enjoyable holiday. I can assure them that if I were to drink again, I very soon wouldn’t have a wife and I wouldn’t be able to do the happy and rewarding things I do now.

People in continuing recovery from alcoholism or drug addiction tend to have very similar strategies for getting through the Christmas and New Year holiday season.

We spend some special time meeting each other – just to say how grateful we are to be in each other’s company rather than in a hospital or drunk tank or police cell or asleep in the street. I myself have been very fortunate. I’ve never had any of those experiences. This makes me even more grateful to be with those who are alcoholics or addicts like me. I got off the crazy merry-go-round before I fell under it.

If other people find they need a strategy to keep them on the straight and narrow, they might find it beneficial to join my friends and me now, rather than wake up in a few years’ time when they’ve caused themselves – and possibly other people – a lot of damage.

Happy Christmas everybody!

Avoid an alcohol relapse over the festive season

November 29, 2018admin Alcohol

The busiest day of the year in my rehab is January 13th. The hope at home is that everybody will be relaxed, enjoying themselves and having a good time over the holidays. The reality of the Christmas period is that it is often a very stressful time.

Families gather round to have a good fight. Old resentments come bubbling up. The ironic statement that families are for Christmas – and only for Christmas – becomes painfully true.

For alcoholics and drug addicts it can be a very challenging time. If, from previous experience they recognise the need for abstinence, they may get through the break by ‘white knuckling’ it. They clench their fists in determination. That hardly makes for peace and good will!

In the UK we live in an alcohol using society. Alcohol tends to features in all celebrations. It’s in our culture. We comfort ourselves over the past with a drop of the hard stuff. We rejoice in the present with hooch. We toast the future with booze. There’s no getting away from it.

And drugs are more frequently tolerated nowadays. They’re often seen as the alcohol of a younger generation. In the mistaken belief that ‘soft’ drugs like cannabis and amphetamines (speed) are relatively harmless, there is increasing pressure towards legalisation. At a significant level, drug use of one kind of another is becoming a new norm. ‘Substance abuse’ is seen as a term to be used by doctors and social workers, not by people having a toot of cocaine of a bit of wacky backy to enjoy themselves.

The holiday season is a high risk time of year for people ‘in recovery’ from alcoholism and drug addiction. ‘Recovering alcoholics’ and ‘recovering addicts’, as they describe themselves, are abstinent. These people know they are vulnerable to relapse because they’ve relapsed so many times before. This results in them being highly alert and vigilant over the Christmas and New Year holiday time. And then – on January 13th – they relax. And bang! Down they go.

An underlying alcohol addiction or drug dependency does not take holidays. It stays with us wherever we are and whatever we do. And we resent that. We feel that only weak people are alcoholics and addicts. The truth is often the opposite.

Addictive disease is no respecter of persons. It affects prince and pauper, egg-head and air-head, alike. Many people who are absolutely determined to prove to themselves and other people that they are most definitely not addicts in any way, simply defer the day of recognition that they are.

An alcohol rehab like mine focusses on accurate diagnosis on an addictive nature. Over-diagnosis (labelling people as alcoholics when they are not) is just as dangerous as under-diagnosing (failing to pick up the early signs of a progressive illness). My questionnaires on this website make clear distinctions between people who are addicts of any kind and those who are not.

Addiction treatment has to be targeted towards long-term addiction recovery. The goal is to avoid relapse. This is not achieved by the three things families most often believe in and fervently put into practice: love, education and punishment. The approach that is successful in gaining continuing relapse prevention is daily commitment to working the Twelve Step programme, first introduced by Alcoholics Anonymous.

The love that works is the love that people in recovery give to each other. The effective principle is that ‘we keep what we give away’.

The education that works is through gaining an understanding of addictive disease as a condition that is probably genetically linked, affecting some families in particular.

The punishment that addicts learn from is the punishment we give to ourselves. We get sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Staying clean and sober during the holidays is no different in principle from relapse prevention and staying abstinent and enthusiastic at any time. Working the Twelve Steps of the AA programme each and every day takes very little time but the benefits are lifelong.

Using the support group of AA, or another anonymous group for another addiction, maintains contact with people who understand the nature of the problem instinctively. A sober friend is a friend indeed – and often has a cracking sense of humour: alcoholism is a serious malady but members of AA know very well how to poke fun at themselves when they are fully aware of their previous insanity.

I last used alcohol, or any form of addictive substance, on 12th October 1984. Nobody has to pick up the pieces after me these days. That adds up to many many happy holiday seasons, not only for me but for my family as well.

Dry January and beyond. The benefits of long term sobriety.

January 16, 2018admin Alcohol

There are people who simply overindulged over Christmas. They see a dry January as a good way to detox. That’s fine. A party every day is no party at all. It becomes the norm – like the Queen going to yet another banquet. Surely the fun in life is in its contrasts.

But these people sometimes wonder how much better they would feel if they were to abstain for longer than a month. Would they keep feeling better and better?

Certainly, in my case, I did and I still do. I never did drink excessively, in the way some of my medical school contemporaries did, but their subsequent experience was a preliminary wake-up call to me. Or should have been. The heavy drinkers are dead.

I stopped drinking alcohol – and using other addictive substances like nicotine, caffeine, sugar and refined grains – because, at the tender age of 47, I could at last see where I was going.

Other people – my wife in particular – had seen my Rake’s Progress for many years. But I was blind to it until it was causing me so much pain that I had to change. Somehow.

But then I found that I didn’t know how. As a doctor, I had been trained to observe the consequences of a high alcohol consumption and I did. In other people.

I also saw the results of cigarette smoking. In other people.

And of over-eating. In other people.

What I had not been trained to observe was the common addictive process behind these behaviours.

Nor had I seen that the most common feature of determined efforts to control compulsive behaviour is relapse.

And, of course, I didn’t see that any of this applied to me. I was fine. Just fine.

But I wasn’t fine at all. I earned my living and provided for my family. And everything in my external life was hunky-dory.

By contrast, my internal life – my relationship with myself – was a mess. I felt empty for no obvious reason. I felt I was in a ‘minus one’ emotional state. So – perfectly logically – I went looking for ‘plus ones’. And when I found them I stuck to them.

Why ever not? They worked. They lifted my mood so that I felt normal. Yes. That was it. I wasn’t looking to get high. I just wanted to feel at peace with myself.

Alcohol achieved that happy state. So did nicotine, caffeine, sugar and refined grains. They hit the spot.

Potatoes and carrots had no emotional effect on me. So I didn’t bother with them.

But in time, as my addictive nature progressively took over my life, I got progressively more damaging consequences.

It would have been smart of me to have recognised that, if I was on a slippery slope, I should get off it as soon as possible. But I wasn’t that smart. I went on, determinedly trying to prove to myself and other people that I was in good shape when I clearly wasn’t.

The only thing that turned me round was pain. When other people bailed me out from the negative consequences of my compulsive behaviour – such as when my wife took on more work to pay my gambling debts – I got worse.

Nowadays, as a result of avoiding all mood-altering substances, I feel better and better. And I’m happier and more creative than I’ve ever been. I’ve given up nothing of any lasting value. And I’ve gained a great deal.

I like the taste of fizzy water, tomato juice and freshly squeezed orange juice. I like chicory, aubergines and avocados. I like risotto. I like grilled prawns. I like lots of drinks and foods. I don’t need alcohol, sugar or refined carbohydrates. They provide a shot-term lift but a long-term drop.

I no longer enjoy drinks and foods that other people say are fun or even vital. I don’t smoke cigarettes or drink or eat anything that contains caffeine. Those substances wouldn’t be fun for me nowadays. If I were to start using them again, I fear I might go on and on and not be able to stop before I got myself into difficulty.

So I don’t start. And I work the Twelve Step programme as a daily preventive. I use it as a vaccine, not as a treatment. I’m not particularly concerned over my last drink. It was a long time ago. But I am worried about the prospect of my next one. I don’t want to relapse and go back down into the pit of despair again. I want to live and love. And I do. My life really does get better and better.

Why Do I Keep Choosing To Drink When I Want To Be Sober?

January 16, 2018admin Alcohol

People often ask me why they keep choosing to drink when they genuinely want to be sober.

I asked myself that same question many times for many years. My diets and periods of abstinence ended in binges, time and time again.

Already, after a couple of weeks, there are many people who have tried to have a dry January but have failed. They have openly admitted this.

These people don’t necessarily drink a lot in total but they do tend to rely on a glass of wine emotionally in an evening to help them relax and switch off.

They see themselves as sensible drinkers. They use mood-altering substances and processes to help them deal with the stresses and strains of their lives. That seems rational enough to them. It may work for them in their lives. And it did in mine for many years.

Nowadays I make different choices. I move away from unrewarding relationships. I change my work if it no longer gives me the pleasure it once did. I stop doing things that I find damaging. And I continue to do things that are self-enhancing.

For example, I loved being a doctor but I haven’t worked as a doctor for the last nine years. Regulations and restrictions took away all opportunity to innovate. I want to be my sort of doctor, doing work that I value, not being merely a unit of production in someone else’s Grand Design. So I work nowadays as a counsellor. I am not able to prescribe drugs and I don’t want to do so. I like personal contact with human beings, not zombies.

And, for similar reasons, I no longer want to run an in-patient rehab. I did that for 23 years and loved every minute. But the imposed administrative and financial burdens have taken away all the creative stimulus. Today I enjoy working on an out-patient basis on my own. And my patients benefit from receiving my undivided attention.

My life belongs to me. I do what I choose to do with it. I no longer choose to drink – or use any mood-altering substance – because I’ve learned that I don’t have the gift for doing so without damaging myself and the people close to me.

There are still various external stressors in my family life and professional life. Of course there are. But stress would be the internal reaction in how I react to those stressors. I choose to accept them as they are if they are generated by other people. I can’t change them. But I can change myself and I do.

I’m not the same person I was last year, let alone a decade or more ago. I learn new things and I incorporate them into my understanding. Then I make decisions on whether or not I want to change my actions and reactions.

I doubt I shall choose to go back to drinking alcohol. I would risk losing my marriage, my work, my friendships and social activities. That would be a huge amount of loss in exchange for minimal – if any – benefit. Reflecting on that prospect, it strikes me that surrendering my abstinence – and all that goes with it – would not be a rational or positive choice.

But I’m an addict. I have an addictive nature. That’s my natural state in the same way that I’m short-sighted, allergic to bee-stings and have osteoporosis. I can’t change any of those things. I have to learn to live with them and minimise their potential to cause me damage.

I follow exactly that principle with my addictive nature. I acknowledge it. I don’t say I have ‘a bad habit’ or ‘a bit of a problem’. I’m an addict. I can say dammit, if I want to do so, but that won’t change anything. I have to change my behaviour.

I do that by remaining abstinent and by working the Twelve Step programme every day. My addictive nature is still there. I know that. But it has no effect on me nowadays precisely because I do accept it. Far from using determination and willpower to keep it at bay, I simply acknowledge it, work the Steps, and get on with my life.

The end result is that I’m reliable – to myself and to other people. That saves an enormous amount of hassle and grief and gives me choice. I do the things I want. I never find myself in the position of doing things I don’t want to do. I have a simple, straightforward, loving and lovely life.

Dry January

January 15, 2018admin Alcohol

If you want a delicious meal and a pint of an excellent real ale, go to see my nephew, Michael, who owns and runs The Kings Arms in Trowbridge. By contrast, if you have repeatedly drunk too much on occasions, you might be better off seeing me.

A dry January helps some people but not others. It’s a good idea if it helps some people to recognise that they have a bigger problem than they thought. It’s a bad idea if it encourages people to believe that one month of abstinence proves anything at all.

There are four distinct populations:

Total abstainers often do so for medical, religious or family reasons. Or because they discover they don’t have the gift for using mood-altering substances and processes regularly without going too far on occasions.

Moderate users do so for the taste or for a transient lift to their spirits.

Regular heavy users may do so in a particular social culture.

Alcoholics find it difficult to control their further use once they start to drink in any day.

The concept of a dry January doesn’t really address any of these groups. It tries to treat the four different populations as if they were one.

Abstainers have already made this choice and don’t need to prove anything to themselves or anyone else.

Genuinely moderate users can abstain if they want to, but there is no pressing need in January or at any other time.

Regular heavy users may benefit from changing their social culture rather than from making sporadic, rather than sustained, changes in their drinking behaviour.

Alcoholics – people who have a progressive and destructive relationship with alcohol – can abstain in January or at any other time in the early stages of their illness. They are delighted to join an abstinence campaign in January. When they succeed in maintaining their abstinence without going up the wall, they believe they are proving to themselves and to everyone else that they may have ‘a bit of a problem as a result of particular stresses in life’ but they certainly don’t believe they are addicted. Sadly – and dangerously – that belief is false.

The very fact that some people believe they should cut down indicates that they know they have a problem. They do not have as much control as they might wish. That’s worrying.

The human brain is delicate. It doesn’t like being abused. It tells us so when we are hungover, wasted, stoned, smashed. And yet these states are called fun and believed to be a necessary part of normal life. We may think it amusing when we can’t think or even walk straight. Our brain tissue does not share our sense of humour. It gets damaged. So do our livers and hearts and many other organs. And that’s where the idea of a dry January comes from.

But let’s have a look at that. Are we saying that if we give our minds and bodies a reprieve for a month we can then go back to damaging them? Are we saying that we can’t be causing ourselves any real damage if we can stop for a week, a month or even more? Are we saying that we have to use something in order to relax and enjoy ourselves? If so, we’re in much bigger trouble than we think we are.

It’s only a matter of time before other people notice that sad truth. We ourselves are often the last people to accept it.

We consider changing our behaviour only when we’re in so much pain that we feel we’ve got to do something. But by that time it may be impossible to turn the clock back on some of the physical and social damage we have caused. And, in time, we may find it increasingly difficult to acknowledge this damage. We may believe we are in trouble with our personal and professional surroundings, rather than with ourselves.

I never suggest that my patients should have a dry January.

If they want to find out if they have an addictive nature, rather than persuade themselves this couldn’t possibly be true, I suggest that they should drink a couple of glasses of alcohol – no more, no less – at lunchtime, with none before or afterwards, every day for a week. If they can do that, I suggest they go to see my nephew, Michael. If they can’t, they might benefit from calling me on 07540281820 to talk to me before they accumulate even more damage than they have already.

I haven’t drunk alcohol for over 33 years. It doesn’t agree with me.

But I don’t miss it at all. I’m far more creative and productive – and happier – than I ever was in my drinking days.

Let me tell you what does suit me very well: I love music in general and opera in particular. I write novels and sonnets. I take photographs and make them into picture story books. All in addition to earning my living and paying my way.

In the last month, on top of doing my counselling work, I’ve been to two operas, four musicals, two plays and a film, I’ve completed setting out a book of photographs and I’ve edited a novel.

I’m flying, buzzing, having a ball, happy as… Yes, well, there’s no need to make comparisons. Let me just say that, despite being totally abstinent, I’m having the time of my life.

Dr Robert Lefever's Recovery Blog

Alcohol

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