1. You're Powerless!

What happens if or when you go to an AA meeting? When you arrive and sit down you're probably feeling a little unsure of yourself and then one of the first things you'll hear is that you're powerless over alcohol.

Just when you've finally taken the initiative to deal with your drinking problem you're told you're powerless. And if you're like most people, that undermines your self-confidence even more.

Let's take a quick look and see if this basic principle of the AA treatment program applies to you or... if it's complete nonsense.

Are you truly out of control in other aspects of your life? For 95% of people the answer is a resounding NO. Over the years you've had success in many areas. Like all of us, you experienced both success and occasional disappointment, but you were hardly powerless. And you are no more helpless today than you were then.

When someone says you're powerless to deal with alcohol it's a cop out, an easy way to deny responsibility and never actually make any progress in resolving the problem. It's also a devious way to bind you to a 12-Step group ... forever.

Once you're hooked on the idea that you're a victum, and the only people who can help you are the 12-Step group, how much progress do you think you'll make?

You actually do, however, have the power to change. What you need is expert guidance in how to exert your personal control.

Imagine if you were struggling to lose weight and someone told you that you were powerless. You'd be doomed to failure. That's what will happen to you if you buy the nonsense that you have no control over alcohol.

#2 - You Have An Incurable Disease!

If you have ever been to alcohol rehab or AA or talked to almost anybody about alcoholism, you have probably noticed that nearly everybody immediately puts on solemn faces and then they say "Well, you know, it's a disease. You'll need to stay "clean and sober" for the rest of your life, or it will kill you." Wrong!

There is little evidence that it's a disease and ample evidence that it's rarely progressive. Alcoholism is a symptom and a coping mechanism that's gotten out of control.

It's easy to forget that alcohol is a drug, and, as its popularity shows, an extremely effective one. It reduces anxiety and tension with speed and effectiveness - not to mention availability - other drugs can't hope to match.

So stop thinking about alcoholism as a disease and think about it as a symptom of other things in your life that are not working. Drinking too much is a behavior that needs to be modified or eliminated. You do it with other behaviors all of the time, you can do it with alcohol, too.

All the disease concept does anymore is provide an "out" for people who wish to continue an alcohol centered life under the guise of being helpless victims - people who wish to maintain the behaviors but escape the criticism of friends, family, employers, and judges. You have to admit there is some appeal there.

That appeal, however, ends when you actually want to fix your life. Then it simply becomes a stumbling block, one which, if you embrace it, will kill you. You will just keep going to meetings, relapsing, bingeing, and "recovering" until you're dead.

Is that what you really want? Or do you want to be a fully functional person who re-asserts control over a once useful coping mechanism that's gone awry?

#3 - You have to "Hit Bottom"!

Everyone's told you that you have to "hit bottom" before you'll be ready to recover. Do you actually want to wait until after you've lost your marriage, your career, your home, your money, and are living in a box under the freeway ramp with a shopping cart full of secondhand clothes? At that point, why would you bother to sober up?

We think that's a dangerous concept to base your health care decisions on. Consider, for example, how that would play out in maintaining your home...

Let's look at alcoholism as if actually were a disease. What do we know about real illness? Well, first there's prevention, then there's regular checkups, then early detection, then... Oops. Early detection? What happened to "hitting bottom?"

Of course that's the problem. With illness, we don't wait until the patient is nearly dead before beginning treatment. Effective treatment is begun, good follow-up maintains the progress, and changes in the patient's life are instituted that will sustain the recovery.

It shouldn't be surprising that this same model works well for diverting a client from alcohol abuse and dependence. The trouble is people have been discouraged - by mythology, stigma, and "lifelong recovery" - from getting help in the early stages when complete remission is not only possible, but likely.

#4 - You Need 30, 60, or 90 Days of Residential Treatment!

You've been looking at treatment programs on the internet for a while now, but they all want you to spend a minimum of 30 days with them, preferably longer. Thirty days is longer than your vacation. People will find out. You'll have to tell your boss! And insurance won't cover it.

You find yourself wondering, "Where am I going to find the time, or the money, to do 30 days of rehab, much less 60 or 90? Or do it without everyone knowing? I can't!"

Fortunately, you don't have to. You may need a few days respite and sorting time, but you don't need the wasted time and money, the disruption, or the lack of confidentiality.

"But everyone goes away to rehab, so it must be better than outpatient treatment - right?"

No. Good outpatient treatment is usually more effective, cheaper, less disruptive, and more often designed around you - not "The Program."

Most of your time in a residential program will be spent on filler. Let's take a quick look at a typical day:

Breakfast

Chores

12-Step meeting billed as "group counseling"

An hour with your counselor (maybe)

Lunch

12-Step meeting

Journaling and working on your "steps"

Recreation time

Quiet time

Dinner

Evening presentation on "the Steps"

Actual professional counseling probably won't add up to more than a few hours a week, if that. Not much to show for your $30,000 to $100,000 vacation from reality. You'd be far better off going to a spa than to residential rehab.

#5 - You will never recover.

Do you really want to be "in recovery" forever? Of course not! It's boring, depressing, humiliating, and bad for you. You want to get a grip and get over it.

Besides, focusing on alcohol won't reduce your dependency on alcohol and being "in recovery" is more apt to make you drink than save you from it. Don't you want to focus on where you want to go, not where you've been?

Instead focus on your life without alcohol's problems, just like professional athletes focus on being winners. Successful people concentrate on doing things right, not on what they did wrong.

That's right. You'll change your alcoholic behaviors a lot more successfully by NOT focusing on them for the rest of your life.

Recovered means you've successfully replaced a set of alcohol fueled behaviors and developed a more rewarding life. It's the best insurance you can get against a return to the bad old days. Yes, occasionally you'll be tempted to revert to your former habits, but having an interesting life which has no room for alcohol abuse is the best way to maintain success.

And:

#6 - Moderation Is Impossible!

Much as we would all like to scarf down quarts of ice cream and entire packages of Oreos at one sitting, mostly we don't do it. The same goes for hitting the accelerator and driving through our neighborhoods at 100 mph. We don't usually do that either.

Moderation and good judgment go together, whether in eating, driving or drinking.

Just because you raided the freezer for ice cream a few too many times doesn't mean you can never eat dessert again.

But, most of you have been told that if you drink too much, you have to stop drinking. Forever, and ever, and ever. And never drink even one tiny little glass of wine or beer or you will soon be a hopeless drunk living under a freeway bridge, in a box, with all your possessions in a grocery cart.

People call us all the time and the conversations go something like this: "I don't want to quit, I just want to drink less. None of you people will talk to me."

"We will," we say.

So, does that mean it might be possible to drink again sometime once you've gotten a handle on your problem? Yes. Ann the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), based on a sample of 43,000 U.S. alcoholics over a year's time, found that two-thirds of the problem drinkers were better and many of those had returned to normal, healthful, drinking patterns!

You may find abstaining easier than moderating, but that should be your choice.