IN THIS CHAPTER
•A NEW FRAME OF MIND •ADDICTION •HOW EASYWAY WORKS •BECOMING FREE AND STAYING FREE •SEEING ALCOHOL FOR WHAT IT IS
Your escape from the alcohol trap has already begun. Our job now is to remove the brainwashing that causes your desire to drink.
There was a time when I was just like Sean, resigned to an early death through a habit I just couldn’t seem to kick. My problem was smoking. I’d watched it kill my father and I assumed the same fate lay in store for me. I tried and failed to quit on numerous occasions but I just couldn’t rid myself of my craving for cigarettes.
Sometimes I managed to go without for months, but I always went back to it eventually, like a man struggling to claw his way out of a slippery pit and, just when he thinks he’s nearly out, losing his grip and sliding back in. It was as if there were some unseen force pulling me down.
Then something happened that, like a miracle, enabled me to escape immediately. It wasn’t a miracle, it was a chance comment that made me realize my smoking was not a habit but an addiction. That was the unseen force that was dragging me back into the pit time after time, and as soon as I understood that, I was able to conquer it immediately and permanently. Why? Because it changed my whole way of looking at the problem.
Until then I had believed that smoking was just a habit, albeit a particularly nasty one, that I couldn’t seem to give up. I assumed that it must do something for me, otherwise why couldn’t I just stop? After all, I had powerful reasons for quitting: the ill health, the cost, the smell, the despair of my family.
The mistake I was making was in trying to find a logical reason why I smoked. I was unaware that the drug had twisted my logic. Once I recognized my smoking problem as drug addiction, I was able to understand the nature of the trap.
The word “addiction”, like “alcoholic”, is one that most people do not wish to hear applied to themselves. You will have noticed that I’ve used it several times already in this book and it may have caused you some alarm. Perhaps your view of an addict is the miserable junkie, curled up in the corner, out of his head on some drug, or shaking and desperate because he can’t get a fix. Funnily enough, I used to get like that when I ran out of cigarettes and I’ve seen plenty of drinkers who fit that description when they’re desperate for a drink. But addiction is not a word to shy away from. For me it was the key to getting free, because it opened my eyes to two crucial facts about my inability to quit smoking:
1.It was not a weakness in my character.
2.It was not some magical quality in the cigarette.
Both these beliefs had left me feeling powerless to quit. Recognizing that my problem was drug addiction enabled me to follow the simple steps to escape.
My addiction was smoking, but all addictions work in the same way. The effect of the drug replaces your natural coping mechanisms, so you turn more and more to the drug for support and feel less and less able to cope without it. Not all addictions involve a drug like alcohol or nicotine. Gambling, for example, is an addiction whereby the “drug” of betting money causes the same psychological feeling of dependency that I’ve just described. As you fall deeper and deeper into the trap, it becomes harder and harder to see a way out.
Feeling unable to stop drinking despite the harm you know it’s causing you is a sure sign of addiction. As with all addictions, it’s the illusion that the drug provides a genuine pleasure or support that keeps you trapped. Drinkers suffer the illusion that alcohol helps them relax, gives them courage, makes them more eloquent and fun to be with. In fact, it does the complete opposite.
As the alcohol leaves your body, you start to feel uptight. There are effective ways to relieve stress, but as a society of drinkers we’re at a disadvantage: we have been brainwashed to believe that alcohol does the job. So instead of doing something genuinely relaxing, we do the one thing that will guarantee we end up more stressed: we have another drink. And so a vicious circle is formed.
Drinking temporarily relieves the uncomfortable feeling of the body withdrawing from alcohol – a feeling that non-drinkers do not suffer from in the first place. Therefore,
When you understand and accept the simple truth that drinking does absolutely nothing for you whatsoever, you will realize that stopping, therefore, involves no sacrifice or deprivation and you will find it easy to do so.
Every drinker who picks up this book is eager to discover the secret of this magical cure to their alcohol problem and probably wonders why I don’t just come out with it in Chapter 1, but I hope by now you’re beginning to see the two fallacies in this expectation:
2.There’s no magic.
Easyway is a method that works by applying undisputable logic to strip away the brainwashing that keeps us in the alcohol trap, and replace it with understanding, thereby removing your desire to drink. The key is made up of the instructions I give you throughout the book and, as I explained in Chapter 1, it must be used like the combination lock of a safe. Each instruction must be understood and applied in order for the combination to work.
I have already given you the first two instructions and in getting this far you have taken your first steps to freedom, but please be patient. The key to your escape does not lie in the final chapter or the first chapter, or any chapter alone; the whole book is the key.
The key works by removing the illusion that you are making a sacrifice by stopping. In order to do that, we need to change your frame of mind. So let’s identify what’s wrong with your current frame of mind as a drinker, remove that from your way of thinking and let logic and reason undo the brainwashing you’ve been subjected to ever since you were a child.
EVER-PRESENT DANGER
An alcohol addict is caught in a trap, just like someone who’s stepped on a mantrap. Between us we have the two things we need to set him free: he contributes a strong desire to be released and I have the key that will release him. All he has to do is follow my instructions.
However, once he’s released there is another danger: the trap still exists and we have to ensure that he does not walk into it again.
People with addictions like drinking, smoking and gambling are notorious for “giving up” and starting again, so helping you to escape from the trap is the first step. The second is ensuring you never walk into it again. We can do this by making sure you understand the nature of the trap.
Unlike a mantrap, the alcohol trap is essentially psychological. It exists only in the mind – an illusion conjured up by a combination of the chemical addiction and massive brainwashing. Like the table illusion in the last chapter, you have been fed a false view of reality, which has created the illusion that you get a genuine pleasure or support from drinking and that quitting will involve pain and sacrifice. But after seeing those tables, you should now be open to the possibility that those beliefs are false.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that 10 per cent of adults have lived their lives without ever falling for the alcohol trap, despite being subjected to a massive amount of brainwashing. This brings us to the real difference between drinkers and non-drinkers. Obviously one drinks and the other doesn’t, but that’s not the whole story.
No one forces you to drink. No one holds a gun to your head. You find the drink, you pour it, you bring the glass to your lips. The fact that part of your brain wishes you didn’t, or can’t understand why you do, doesn’t change the situation.
Easyway ensures that you escape from the trap permanently by removing your desire to drink.
That ten per cent who live their lives without ever falling for the alcohol trap are subjected to the same brainwashing as everyone else and therefore somewhere in their minds they probably believe that there is some benefit to be enjoyed from drinking. They, like you, are also aware of the misery that alcohol can cause and they’re able to rationalize that there is no sense in inflicting that on themselves. They’re able to maintain the power of reason because, luckily for them, their reasoning hasn’t been affected by addiction.
As long as you retain the desire to drink, you will suffer a feeling of deprivation when you stop. You will have to use willpower to fight this sense of deprivation and you will remain at risk of falling back into the trap for the rest of your life.
Easyway permanently removes the desire to drink so that you do not go through life feeling deprived or having to resist temptation.
If you think that sounds impossible, it’s because of the distorted way you see drinking. Non-drinkers have no desire to drink and nor did you until you got hooked. There are also millions of ex-drinkers who once thought they could never get free but have now escaped and have no desire whatsoever to drink again.
Soon you will join them.
It’s easy for us to recognize the heroin trap. The things we’re told about heroin as we’re growing up are quite clear: ADDICTION! SLAVERY! POVERTY! MISERY! DEGRADATION! DEATH! But the way alcohol is portrayed is completely different. Happy, beautiful people, having fun or acting cool and sophisticated, showing no signs of strain or anxiety, enjoying all the pleasures that life has to offer. The message is straightforward: “Alcohol makes you happy.”
Do you agree with that? I assume you don’t, which is why you’re reading this book. It’s time to blow away these illusions once and for all, so that instead of seeing drinking as a pleasure or support, you will see the true picture, just as you do with heroin. By the time you finish the book your frame of mind will be such that, whenever you think about drinking, instead of feeling deprived because you can no longer drink, you will feel overjoyed because you no longer have to.
If you can look at a heroin addict and see the mistake he’s making in thinking the next fix will make everything all right, you’re already on the way to solving your own problem. The aim of this book is to help you reverse the brainwashing that’s led you into the drinking trap. It will help you to see that drinking does not relieve your misery at all, it’s the cause of it. There is no need for you to be miserable. The life of the happy non-drinker awaits you very soon. You have every reason to feel excited.
In choosing to read this book, you have made it clear that you have reached the point in your descent into the alcohol trap where you realize that all is not well. Perhaps you reached that point a long time ago but did not receive the correct instructions to help you escape. Now you want to get out, you want to stop drinking and start living life to the full free from the slavery of alcohol. This book has all the instructions you need to make your escape. It’s time to cast off the misery of alcohol addiction and start feeling excited about what you’re about to achieve.
My third instruction is:
From now on, I want you to put the idea that escape will be hard and painful out of your mind. It’s a myth. Instead, think about your liberation as a hostage must think about theirs. Think about the light, the space, the freedom, the happiness. Think about your friends and family and how much life you have to share with them. Feel the excitement growing as that freedom draws nearer. Nothing stands in your way now. Just keep following the instructions and your escape is guaranteed.
SUMMARY
•Your addiction is not a weakness in you, nor something magical in the alcohol. It’s a trap.
•The alcohol trap exists in the mind.
•In order to escape permanently we must remove the desire to drink.
•Rejoice! You’re on the road to solving your problem.