IN THIS CHAPTER
•A TUG-OF-WAR •PROJECTED FEARS •FEAR OF FAILURE •FEAR OF SUCCESS •ALL YOU HAVE TO GAIN
Drinkers are caught in a tug-of-war of fear which makes them dread even making the attempt to quit.
Drinkers make excuses for continuing to drink because they’re afraid of trying to quit. They believe drinking provides them with a genuine pleasure or support and fear life without it. At the same time, they’re aware of the harm they’re inflicting on themselves and their loved ones and they’re afraid of where it might end up.
This tug-of-war of fear is typical of addiction. You hear it in the things addicts say:
“I know it’s destroying my life, but it’s my last little crutch.”
“I’m afraid of losing my family, but I can’t imagine life without booze.”
Fear is both an instinctive and an intellectual response. As discussed in the last chapter, instinct drives us to fight or flight, alerting us to danger and making us wary in potentially dangerous situations. As such it’s vital to our survival. But the things that make us fearful can be real or imaginary. Our intellect has enabled us to learn about potential dangers and how to avoid them, so much so that we can be fearful of dangers of which there is no evidence.
The fears associated with losing our job, for example, are intellectual. We have learned about the possible consequences of finding ourselves unemployed – e.g. having no money, being forced to sell our possessions, sacrificing the pleasures and comforts that we enjoy now – and so we do everything in our power to safeguard our job and make ourselves indispensible, even when there is no immediate threat of losing it.
In this instance our intellect is very helpful. But what if your fears are based on false information? Say, for example, you read in a magazine that fruit causes cancer. You would probably avoid eating fruit. You would also worry about the damage already done by all the fruit you’ve eaten in your life.
I have yet to hear anyone claim that fruit causes cancer, but it’s typical of the sort of scare stories with which we’re bombarded on a regular basis. Some of them are based on sound evidence, others are absurd. As consumers, it’s impossible for us to know what to believe and we end up spending a lot of our life worrying about things that will never happen and being blasé about things that will.
Fear is the basis of all addictions. It’s the force that makes the trap so powerful. Addicts are fooled into believing that they’re deriving some form of pleasure or support from the drug. It’s ingenious because it works back to front. It’s when you’re not drinking that you suffer the slightly ill-at-ease, empty, insecure feeling of not being comfortable in your skin. When you drink, you partially relieve that feeling and your brain is fooled into believing that the alcohol is giving you a little boost. In fact, it’s alcohol that created the ill-at-ease feeling in the first place. The more you drink, the more it drags you down and the greater you feel the need for what you perceive as your last little crutch.
This is why drinkers can never win while they’re in the trap. When you’re drinking you wish you didn’t have to. It’s only when you can’t drink that it appears to be so precious. What sort of pleasure is that?
ONCE YOU UNDERSTAND THE ALCOHOL TRAP COMPLETELY, YOU WILL HAVE NO MORE NEED OR DESIRE TO DRINK
Being addicted to alcohol is like being in a prison. Every aspect of your life is controlled by drinking: your daily routine, your hopes, your view of the world, your suffering. Of course, you’re not physically imprisoned. There are no walls or bars. The prison is in your mind. However, as long as you remain a slave to alcohol, you will experience the same psychological symptoms as an inmate locked in a cell.
If you’ve tried and failed to quit drinking you will know that it leaves you feeling more trapped than you did before you made the attempt. You’ve seen films where a prisoner is thrown into a cell and the first thing he does is run to the door and wrench at the handle. This confirms his predicament: he really is locked in.
Trying and failing to quit has the same effect on the addict. It reinforces the belief that you’re trapped in a prison from which there is no escape. This can be a crushing experience and many people conclude that the best way to avoid the misery of failure is to avoid trying to escape in the first place. We put off what we regard as the “evil day” because we fear we’re going to have to go through some terrible trauma and will probably fail in any case.
Fear keeps us locked in the misery of the addiction and prevents us risking the disappointment of failure. What we don’t realize is:
The fear of failure is illogical in this case. It’s the fear of something that has already happened. You’re already a slave. In the case of alcohol addiction, you suffer a compulsion to keep drinking even though it’s ruining your life and making you miserable. As long as that continues, you will continue to feel a failure.
When channelled properly, the fear of failure can be a positive force. It’s the emotion that focuses the mind of the runner on the starting blocks, the ballerina waiting in the wings and the student going into an exam. Fear of failure is the little voice in your head that reminds you to prepare thoroughly, to remember everything you’ve rehearsed and trained for and leave nothing to chance.
The addict’s fear of failure is based on an illusion. In fact, you have nothing to lose by trying, even if you do fail. By not trying, you ensure that you remain permanently in the trap. In other words:
But failure isn’t the only fear that keeps addicts imprisoned in the trap.
It’s a sad fact that many long-term prisoners in the penal system reoffend soon after they’re released. This depressing tendency occurs not just because they haven’t learned the error of their ways, but because in some cases they actually want to go back inside. They yearn for the “security” of the prison. Life on the outside is alien and frightening for them, more frightening than life on the inside. It’s unfamiliar and they don’t feel equipped to handle it.
The same fear afflicts addicts. They’re afraid that they won’t be able to enjoy or cope with life without their “crutch”, that they’ll have to go through some terrible trauma to get free of it and that they’ll be condemned to a life of sacrifice and deprivation.
In the case of the person suffering from alcohol addiction, failure means remaining in the old, familiar prison cell; success means coming out into the unknown and that can seem daunting. Like those long-term prisoners, you may be fearful of what life will be like outside and dread the self-discipline, sacrifice and deprivation that you fear will be waiting for you.
Perhaps you’ve been tricked into believing that going through life without drinking is boring. Though you’re well aware of the misery that your drinking causes, you may now have come to think of it as part of your identity. Perhaps you even regard it with a perverse kind of respect, as if there were some sort of shambolic charisma about it. The Hollywood image of the heavy drinker, the chain-smoker and the gambler can suggest that it makes us attractive. Heroic characters in books and films are frequently portrayed as having one or more of these characteristics and the implication is that it makes them human, charming, exciting, lovable.
To the audience maybe; in real life it makes them miserable and impossible to live with.
Cast the illusions aside and be clear in your mind: the panic feeling that makes you afraid even to try to quit drinking is caused by alcohol, not relieved by it. And one of the greatest benefits you’ll receive when you quit is never to suffer it again. The tug-of-war of fear is easy to win because one side is made up of illusions. Remove the illusions and, instead of a conflict of will, all your will is going in one direction – away from alcohol.
If I could transport you now into your mind and body after you become free with this method, you would think, “Will I really feel this good?” Fear will have been replaced by elation, despair by optimism, self-doubt by confidence, apathy by dynamism. Your physical health will of course improve radically too. You will enjoy a newfound energy, as well as the ability to truly relax.
Maybe you’ve tried to stop in the past and gone for weeks, months, even years without drinking, but still found that you missed it. Trust me, this method is different. You will not miss drinking. You’re not giving anything up. There is no sacrifice involved. Instead, you’re removing something from your life that has made you miserable.
You’re trading lack of control over your drinking for total control – no choice for absolute choice.
Part of you feels that alcohol is your friend, your constant companion and support. Get it clearly into your mind, this is an illusion. Alcohol is your worst enemy and, far from supporting you, it’s driving you deeper and deeper into misery. You instinctively know this, so open your mind and follow your instincts.
Think about all the good things you stand to gain by overcoming your drinking problem. Think of the enormous self-respect you’ll have, the time and energy you’ll save, not only by taking alcohol out of your life but also by taking out all the covering up, lying to your friends and family, deceiving your workmates and trying to convince yourself that you’re in control.
That little boost you feel every time you succumb to your addiction is a mere hint of how a non-drinker feels all the time, and how you will feel when you’re free. Wouldn’t you rather feel like that all the time, without any effort or cost and without the horrible lows that alcohol brings?
If you saw a heroin addict suffering the misery of drug addiction, would you advise them to keep injecting heroin into their veins, rather than try living without that “marvellous high” they experience every time they get a fix? Of course you wouldn’t. You would see that the “high” is nothing more than relief from the withdrawal caused by the drug as it leaves the body. It would be obvious to you that the only way to escape the withdrawal permanently would be to stop taking the drug.
Perhaps you don’t think you have the same problem as a heroin addict. I can assure you, all addicts are caught in the same trap. See yourself as you would see a heroin addict and give yourself the only logical piece of advice:
The only reason drinkers fail to see the solution as simple is because they have been brainwashed into the tug-of-war of fear. Once you can see that there is nothing to fear, that you’re not giving up anything or depriving yourself in any way, stopping is easy.
So far I have given you three instructions to put you in the right frame of mind so that this book can help you overcome your drinking problem:
1.Follow all the instructions
2.Keep an open mind
3.Begin with a feeling of elation
Drinking does absolutely nothing positive for you whatsoever and the beliefs that have imprisoned you in the alcohol trap are merely illusions. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by stopping. There is nothing to fear. Life will become infinitely more enjoyable from the moment you become free.
Perhaps you’re afraid that the process itself will be painful. You may have struggled to quit before by using willpower and found it a tortuous experience. That’s because the willpower method doesn’t work. It leaves you feeling deprived and so, as I will explain in the next chapter, you never really get completely free.
It’s now time for my fourth instruction:
I want you to think about everything we’ve covered so far and be clear that you understand and accept it. If you’re struggling with any of the instructions, go back and re-read the relevant chapter until it becomes clear. It’s essential that you not only follow the instructions but also that you understand them.
Sometimes we meet people who say they understand all the instructions, yet they still retain a desire to drink. They have missed something somewhere along the line and it’s essential for them to go back and identify where the problem lies. It’s often that they haven’t truly opened their mind. If you follow all the instructions, you will no longer feel the desire to drink. Remove the desire and the prison door will spring open.
SUMMARY
•Drinkers are pulled in opposite directions by a tug-of-war of fear.
•Succumb to the fear of failure and you guarantee failure.
•The fear of success is based on illusions.
•Alcohol causes the fear. Stop drinking and the fear goes too.
•Open your mind to the marvellous gains of becoming free.
•Never doubt your decision to quit.