What’s baseball got to do with getting over your alcohol abuse?

Early last Sunday morning, coming down stairs to put on coffee and collect the NY Times, I missed the last step, dislocated my left knee, and ruptured the quadriceps tendon and tore some ligaments.

Ouch.

That did earn me my first ever ambulance ride, and, on Tuesday, my first ever surgery (not counting a bit of work I did on myself on the Yukon some 40 years, but that’s a different story).

The main result is that I’ve had a lot of time to watch TV whether I wanted to or not. I even watched a baseball game.

I don’t remember the teams or score, or much of anything else, except that there was more spitting going on than I have ever seen in most of the rest of my life combined.

On the field, in the dugout, players, coaches, hell, even the bat boy.

What is going on here?

Apparently, for all of baseballs history, spitting has been a big self-image thing with most of the players. Gum may have replaced chewing tobacco – not always – but just about everyone in uniform it seems has, by osmosis, incorporated the necessity of spitting as something “real” baseball players do.

Imagine – a completely socially unacceptable activity is a major component of your self-image.

Now switch from spitting to abusing alcohol, guzzling Chardonnay, popping open a beer, or knocking back those shots.

Alcohol or image? As the Virginia Slims athletes and Marlboro cowboys knew, it’s image folks.

And while alcohol itself is relatively easy to give up, the self-image and ingrained habits, conscious or not, aren’t.

That’s how we help – helping you learn to create a different image and habits and realities. A new “normal”.

And that’s where AA kills you – refusing to permit that healthy change of choices to ever occur and sabotaging every attempt you make.

Just imagine starting your day with, “Hi, my name is Ed, and I’m a spitter.” Really helpful?

I don’t think so – and I say that never having met a tobacco product I didn’t like.

But tobacco, like vodka, and motorcycles are no longer part of my self-image or habits, conscious or otherwise.

You?

Once again a recent client wrote to say,

“Your down to earth practical approach was a real eye opener for me and helped me see past the Big Book, with real facts against the AA program.  While AA may work for a few, it clearly doesn’t work for the many. Your services provide real and lasting results without the nonsense you get with other programs.”

“Very highly personalized, very engaging, and very valuable, and above all being treated with dignity, not shame and powerlessness.  I have much of my life back and have started doing stuff, enjoying hobbies and life without alcohol.”

As we have been heard to say, if you want a life devoid of alcohol abuse, then build one with and around people and activities that have nothing to do with alcohol. We all become what we focus on to one degree or another.

Want to be an alcoholic with a drunk ‘s life style?

Join AA – that’s what you’ll end up with whether you drink or not.

Want something better – a real life? We can help you create that too.