Our thanks to all of you who wrote expressing appreciation for the “Unbalanced Relationships” article in last week’s Newsletter.

As we noted, unbalanced personal lives specifically, and unbalanced lives generally, are the #1 factor in creating and maintaining alcohol abuse. And, as also noted, replacing passivity and passive-aggressiveness with assertiveness is the best “step” towards fixing the problem.

That usually includes a change in:

Your Self-Image!

Giving up an alcohol focused life, whether it’s an actively drinking one or a passively “in recovery” one, means looking at a lot of different factors as well as how pervasively it’s grown across your day-to-day life.

Consider just one of these aspects, your self-image.

We all have a multi-faceted self-image, of course. It’s made up of our beliefs, behaviors, work, family and marital status, accomplishments, failures, age, abilities, interests and any number of other components. One of these is our relationship with alcohol.

For some this issue simply doesn’t exist, either because they don’t drink or because their drinking isn’t important enough to qualify as anything worthy of consideration.

For others, their entire active self-image is tied up in either drinking rituals or “in recovery” rituals, which amounts to the same thing – a life consumed by alcohol.

Then there are those of us who fall in the middle.

But for us, and we’re certainly the vast majority of problem drinkers, traditional “rehab” and AA don’t even admit we exist! To them there are only “alcoholics” and “alcoholics in denial.”

And of course their only “solution” is “Don’t drink! Go to AA!” which “works” for about 5% of those who try it. That’s a “solution”?

We suggest that you actively begin managing your self-image. You do this by paying attention to how you talk to and about yourself. That starts with eliminating the words “alcoholic” and “alcoholism” from your vocabulary. They serve no useful purpose unless you wish to continue to misuse alcohol while pretending you aren’t responsible for that choice.

“Powerless” is another good descriptor to 86. You aren’t unless you choose to be. As Henry Ford noted, “Whether you think you can, or think you can, you’re right.”

We often say that if you want to become a “powerless alcoholic,” and forever be “in recovery,” join AA. That’s how you create up that self-image and reality.

But if you want to be an ex-alcohol abuser who fully recovered, whether you abstain or not, then let us help you to efficiently, effectively, and confidentially achieve that end and the enhanced – not demeaned – self-image that goes along with it.

For more information on dispelling AA/rehab mythology, you might want to read:

How Can You Possibly Cure My Years of Alcohol Abuse in Just 5 Days?

Don’t Be Distracted!!

Between the elections and the approaching holidays it’s easy to say, “Oh, well, I’ll fix it next year.”

Really?

I’m sure you’ve been saying that for some time. At least to yourself, but probably to others as well. But what “next year” do you actually have in mind? Does never sound about right?

Believe it or not, a lot of folks schedule their work with us during October, November and December for some pretty good reasons. This year these will include the fact that the elections don’t matter. Yes, you should vote, hopefully thoughtfully, but they will be over in a few weeks and we can forget about them and get on with our lives. Chances are the country will survive.

And the holidays? How many of them have been improved by your drinking? Do you even remember?

Do you remember when Halloween was a children’s holiday instead of the biggest “adult” drinking excuse of the year?

Do you remember when Thanksgiving was about family not drunken football games?

Do you remember when Christmas was about religious traditions, children, and mutual good will?

Would you like for those perversions to disappear from your life and the lives of those you care about? Then why are you waiting?

It’s 5 days here, then weekly sessions that run all the way through the holidays and into 2017. Plan ahead with us and we can probably even do an extra intensive, 3 Day, Thanksgiving special. With Christmas and New Year’s falling on a Sundays we might even be convinced to be creative with one of those weeks.

Planning works! Scheduling works! Overriding distractions works! Enjoying holidays works!

Do you?