Do Alcoholics Have Any Choice About Drinking?

It’s very simple. The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your choices. When you make choices that are good for you, you feel good about yourself, do good things for yourself, and have many good experiences. When you make choices that are bad for you, you feel bad about yourself, do bad things to yourself, and have many bad experiences. One road leads to pleasure, the other, pain…

Have you ever wondered why people do things that are clearly harmful to their health? Perhaps it’s because they really don’t feel they have a choice.

This is why the alcoholic reaches for booze, the junkie for drugs, the sex-addict for porn. It’s because deep in their hearts they have a subconscious need that must be satisfied, and the bottom line is, they haven’t learned to meet that need in a way that truly serves them. Since they can’t see any other way, they haven’t got a choice.

The dictionary defines the word habit as “an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary.” An addiction meanwhile, can be defined as a habit you can’t break without feeling some adverse effects. At that point it becomes a matter of accurately assessing those effects, and then making your decision accordingly. In either case, there is one thing you must know before dealing with an alcohol addiction…

There is always a choice.

The Biggest Choice of All: Personal Responsibility.

The good news is, you already have everything you need to get where you want to go. You have a mind that thinks, a body that feels, and a soul that knows the way. The challenge is getting them all to agree, especially when your mind keeps trying to control the show. But who is really in charge of your life? Is it you, or is it your mind? Are you the master of your thoughts and behavior? Or are you a slave to your own mental impulses?

Consider your actions in life. Everything you do can be attributed to one of two things: Your need to avoid pain, or your desire to gain pleasure. Test this out for yourself. Think of anything you might do today, and see if it can’t be reduced to one of these primary motivations. Here’s a few examples:

Read a book? Gain pleasure.

Pay a bill? Avoid pain.

Go for a walk? Gain pleasure.

Lie to your boss? Avoid pain.

Sleep in? Watch a movie? Answer the phone? Maybe a little of both.

The point is, all your actions, even the actions you really don’t like, originate from either a positive or negative impulse. And every impulse is nothing more than a suggestion that your mind has served up for you to do with as you will. The problem is, being unaware of the essential relationship between yourself and your mind, you react to every thought as if it were a command.

Consider your thoughts for a moment. You have both negative and positive thoughts to choose from. You have negative thoughts to protect you from danger, and you have positive thoughts to bring you delight. The best way to think of this is having a negative mind that wants to avoid pain, and a positive mind that wants to experience pleasure.

But then you have a conflict. To your negative mind, all the potential pleasures in life involve some kind of risk, so it doesn’t want you to go there. And to your positive way of thinking, you can’t fully experience the pleasures in life while you keep holding yourself back, so you disregard the danger.

Imagine an overweight woman standing in front of her refrigerator. On the outside she appears quite calm. But inside, there’s a battle raging over whether or not she’s going to reach in there and grab that slice of chocolate cake. Her positive mind is saying “MMMMM! YES! That cake is gonna taste YUMMY!” While her negative mind keeps saying “NO! Don’t do it! You’re already big as a whale!”

Can you think of a similar example for yourself? A time when you were torn between two possible courses of action? In that situation, what was the pleasurable experience you wanted, and what was the pain or danger you perceived?

Personal response ability means the ability to respond. It is the ability to see various points of view, decide what serves your purpose, and take effective action. It means having the confidence and maturity to figure things out for your self. This way, you can actually move forward instead of feeling stuck or trapped.

The Challenge is…

If you only have two options – pain or pleasure – then it’s not really a choice. It’s a dilemma. So that’s when you have to be clear. Sometimes it is good to think in negative terms, carefully considering the potential threats. Sometimes it is good to think in positive terms, focusing on the potential opportunities. And your third option is to simply stop and be neutral for a moment. To look at both sides equally and objectively before deciding what serves you best.

The reason you struggle is because you have not yet learned how to effectively direct your mind. You are bouncing back and forth between extremes, with no stability in between. Because you have no neutral way to assess your situation, you can’t see all your options. Because you can’t see any options, you remain a victim of your fears and desires.

But there is a path with your name on it. One that takes into consideration both the positive and negative points of view, and enables you to make decisions according to your vision, values and objectives. To find that path, there is one decision that must be made before any other decision will matter:

Is your mind going to serve you? Or are you going to serve your mind?

Either you are going to find a way to master your thoughts, or you will always be a victim of your own mental impulses. Either you are going to learn how to control your thoughts, or your thoughts will always be in control of you. There is no way to succeed without addressing this simple truth.

http://HighsteadAlcoholTreatment.com Mike Highstead is an expert on Alcohol Rehab & Treatment. With a private practice quietly serving many well-known people around the world, his professional success is founded on the personal success of overcoming his own addictions and helping others do the same. Get his free videos for alcoholism and binge drinking at http://highsteadalcoholtreatment.com/alcoholtreatmentprogram/

Are You An Alcoholic?

Do you know the difference between a social drinker, someone who abuses alcohol and an alcoholic? They embody 3 different individuals. The person who is a social drinker only drinks when they are in a social situation, they do not drink alone and they may not even finish one entire drink. A person who abuses alcohol uses alcohol irresponsibly such as drinking and driving or drinking while operating dangerous machinery or someone who intentionally consumed too much alcohol while at a party on a dare or to intentionally get drunk. Someone who is an alcoholic has a disease in which they crave alcohol and suffer withdrawal symptoms if alcohol is not available.

The person who is an alcoholic has become dependent on alcohol in order to cope with life or to feel "normal". The habit of drinking alcohol is having a direct affect on the individual’s ability to function in life.

The person who is an alcoholic will exhibit the following signs of alcohol dependency:

• They have developed a tolerance for alcohol that requires that they consume increasingly higher amounts of alcohol to attain the same level of influence or ability to "feel normal" that drives them to consume the alcohol in the first place.
• They experience withdrawal symptoms if alcohol is not available such as feeling anxious, shaky, sweating, or feeling nauseous.
• The individual will end up drinking more than they intended to drink when they started out drinking that day.
• When they attempt to cut down on the number of drinks they consume or try to stop all together they are unable to be successful and may have had numerous unsuccessful attempts to quit drinking   
• A lot of time and effort is expended towards the need to acquire alcohol
• The individual will miss opportunities for professional activities, social activities or recreational activities with family, co-workers and friends in order to consume alcohol
• They will continue to consume alcohol despite obvious evidence that drinking alcohol is causing them to be physically sick or to have psychological problems that are associated with drinking alcohol.

There are signs that a medical professional will look for when diagnosing a patient with alcoholism.

The individual must exhibit 3 out of these 7 signs to be considered to be dependent on alcohol:

1. There is evidence that alcohol is contributing to loss of work/employment time or performance
2. The individual is angry or sad a good deal of the time
3. There is a history of physical abuse or violence towards others (other drinkers, family members, co-workers, friends or strangers)
4. There is a history of emotional abuse towards family members or others
5. The individual has suffered from one or more "blackouts" after drinking
6. The individual experiences "hangovers" after drinking
7. The individual suffers from tremors, tachycardia or bouts of perspiring