Sober For Good: New Solutions for Drinking Problems-Advice from Those Who Have Succeeded
349
Sober For Good: New Solutions for Drinking Problems-Advice from Those Who Have Succeeded
349eBook
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Overview
Myth: AA is the only way to get sober.
Reality: More than half the people Fletcher surveyed recovered without AA.
Myth: You can't get sober on your own.
Reality: Many people got sober by themselves.
Myth: One drink inevitably leads right back to the bottle.
Reality: A small number of people find they can have an occasional drink.
Myth: There's nothing you can do for someone with a drinking problem until he or she is ready.
Reality: Family and friends can make a big difference if they know how to help.
Weaving together the success stories of ordinary people and the latest scientific research on the subject, Fletcher uncovers a vital truth: no single path to sobriety is right for every individual. There are many ways to get sober - and stay sober. SOBER FOR GOOD is for anyone who has ever struggled not to drink, coped with someone who has a drinking problem, or secretly wondered, "Do I drink too much?"
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780547347288 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 01/17/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 349 |
| Sales rank: | 899,192 |
| File size: | 640 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
1 A New Look at How People Really Solve Drinking Problems If your best friend turned to you for advice about a drinking problem, what would you say? The automatic reaction of most people, nonprofessionals and treatment specialists alike, would likely be “Get yourself to AA.” But is this truly the best response for that individual — is it the only solution? We’ve all heard so many things about recovery, but are they really true?
To find out how people whose lives have been troubled by alcohol have overcome their difficulties, I decided to turn to the foremost experts — those who have actually done it, people who have mastered their former alcohol problems in different ways.* I wanted to determine exactly what these “masters” did — what specific strategies they used — to get sober and stay sober. My call for information was answered by hundreds whose drinking at its worst ranged from what many of us might define as a social drinker’s quota to more than a fifth of hard liquor a day. (All of the 222 masters completed a seven-page questionnaire about their drinking pasts, the turning points, how they resolved their alcohol problems, and how they got on with their lives.) Who Are the Masters?
The masters came to me through postage-paid flyers distributed in public places across the country, advertisements and listings in newspapers and special-interest magazines, postings on the Internet, and recovery groups. Some masters knew me or had heard about my work through a friend.
They come from all walks of life — they’re attorneys, maintenance workers, former topless dancers, college professors, physicians,schoolteachers, homemakers, engineers, judges, former bartenders, current bartenders, nurses, and journalists. They’re Christians and atheists, gay and straight, people from their twenties to their eighties who got sober anywhere from their teens through their fifties and sixties. They include husbands and wives who got sober together as well as a mother and her two grown children who all quit on their own but at different times. A quarter of them are recovery group leaders, mental health professionals, and/or chemical dependency counselors, so they know sobriety from both ends, as former problem drinkers and as experienced helpers of those who are still struggling. Gender-wise, there is close to an even split: 54 percent of the masters are men and 46 percent are women.
Along with stories of people who were rendered destitute because of their drinking, I wanted to include the experiences of people with mild or moderate alcohol problems, because little help is available for them, despite the fact that they are thought to outnumber stereotypical brown-bag “alcoholics” by three or four to one. Therefore, the stories of the masters’ drinking days vary from sagas of high-functioning drinkers who were able to raise families and move upward professionally despite their alcohol abuse to those of hard-core “drunks” who describe loss of jobs, health, children, and dignity. The masters’ drinking at its worst ranged from a reported three to five daily drinks for some people up to two daily quarts of vodka for one man.
At the lower end of the scale, Janet C. (who believes she was “chiefly mentally addicted” to alcohol but considers herself to be an “alcoholic” nonetheless) typically had two or three single-shot martinis before dinner and one or two scotches with soda afterward — surely beyond healthy drinking, but not what most people think of when they picture the stereotypical “alcoholic.” Although she felt that her drinking kept her from being a good parent to her two teenagers, she was always responsible enough to know that she “didn’t dare drive” them around in the evenings.
At the other extreme, the two-quart-a-day vodka drinker, George M., attributes all of the following to his drinking: “My wife left me; I lost my career, my possessions, my teeth, and much of my eyesight; my friends disappeared. I lived in a spare bedroom in my mother’s house, soiled the bed often, had drunk driving and disorderly conduct arrests, and was suicidal.” (With the help of AA, he has been sober for more than five years now.) Like George, a number of other masters once abused drugs such as marijuana and cocaine in addition to alcohol. For all but five of them, alcohol was the drug of choice.
Nearly all of the masters have been continuously sober for five or more years;* the average length of sobriety for the entire group is just over thirteen years. Two thirds of them have at least a decade of sobriety.
Sobriety Means Different Things to Different People For most of the masters, sobriety is synonymous with abstinence. For the vast majority, abstinence turns out to be the best policy: nine out of ten are totally abstinent.
Others have a small amount of alcohol on very rare occasions - - sssssay, when making a toast at a wedding reception. About one out of ten of the masters are near-abstinent, occasional, or moderate drinkers, which challenges the notion that one sip of alcohol will lead you back to full-blown “alcoholism.” For serious problem drinkers and those who are already contentedly abstinent, however, consuming any alcohol can be a risky proposition.
While most people think of sobriety as total abstinence, Webster’s Tenth Collegiate Dictionary defines “sober” not as “abstinent” but as “1 a: sparing in the use of food and drink: abstemious. b: not addicted to intoxicating drink. c: not drunk . . . 4. marked by temperance, moderation, or seriousness.” The masters whom I call sober, then, are those who have resolved their alcohol problems and gotten on top of their drinking, usually through abstinence but sometimes through moderate or occasional drinking.
I sought the masters’ help in answering such questions as these: How important is it to admit to yourself and others that you are an “alcoholic”?
Can you recover — and stay recovered — without going to a recovery group?
If you get sober with the help of a recovery group, do you have to keep going forever?
What about treatment at places like the Betty Ford Center and hospital alcohol programs — is it necessary?
Where do you turn if you have issues about your drinking but don’t really feel you’re an “alcoholic”?
Is it true that you have to “hit bottom” in order to become motivated to deal with a drinking problem?
Before taking action, are most people “in denial” about their drinking problems?
Do you wake up one morning and say, “That’s it: I quit”? If so, what gets you to that point, and does everything else in life just kind of fall into place afterward?
Is it helpful to see yourself as forever recovering, or can you at some point think of yourself as recovered or cured?
Is it true that having just a small amount of alcohol will send you right back to where you left off in your drinking, or is having an occasional drink a possibility for some people?
What if you don’t have strong religious or spiritual beliefs, such as faith in a “higher power” — can you still get sober?
Do you eventually lose your longing for alcohol, or do you pine for it forever?
I had some of my own thoughts about these matters, since over the years I have coped with and resolved my own issues with drinking. But I wanted to find out what others who once struggled with alcohol had to say. What I learned from these masters is striking, and much of what they relate flies in the face of what we’ve been led to believe about “alcoholism.&#
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | vi | |
| Foreword | xv | |
| Introduction | xix | |
| 1 | A New Look at How People Really Solve Drinking Problems | 1 |
| 2 | There's Not Just One Way: How the Masters Got Sober--and Stay Sober | 8 |
| 3 | It's Not How Much You Drink: How the Masters Faced Up to Their Alcohol Problems | 26 |
| 4 | You Don't Have to "Hit Bottom": How the Masters Reached the Turning Point | 48 |
| 5 | It's Not Necessarily One Day at a Time: How the Masters Made a Commitment to Sobriety | 75 |
| 6 | Be Your Own Expert: How Seven Different Masters Found Their Way with Seven Different Approaches | 96 |
| 7 | You Can Help: The Masters' Advice to Family and Friends | 146 |
| 8 | One Drink Does Not a Drunk Make: How the Masters Determined Whether They Could Ever Drink Again | 170 |
| 9 | It's Not Enough Just to Stop Drinking: How the Masters Deal with Life's Ups and Downs Without Alcohol | 193 |
| 10 | Recall the Past, Live in the Present: How the Masters Stay Motivated | 217 |
| 11 | With or Without a "Higher Power": How the Masters Handle Spirituality | 235 |
| 12 | There's Nothing Missing: How the Masters Find Joy Without Alcohol | 247 |
| Appendix | A Consumer Guide to Recovery Options | 267 |
| Selected References | 303 | |
| Index | 311 |
Introduction
Introduction
Like all children, I was intrigued by things forbidden. And in my family, one of those things was alcohol. My parents were conscientious teetotalers, which only served to increase alcohol’s allure when I hit adolescence. Although I was a good student who came from an upstanding family, I enjoyed challenging the rules. I don’t remember having my first drink, but I do recall periodically drinking to excess with teenage friends and driving across state lines to where the drinking age was lower, buying malt liquor, and mixing it with cola to get it down. Eventually I grew to love the taste of hard liquor and wine.
By the time I was a young adult, my parents had relaxed their stance and occasionally enjoyed a glass of wine. But I was already learning that alcohol provided the perfect escape from the pressures of an increasingly stressful career as well as from personal angst. The several glasses of wine that I drank on Friday and Saturday evenings gradually became nightly martinis or manhattans. When other people cut themselves off at social events after a couple of drinks, I kept looking for the waiter to refill my glass. The drinking gave rise to a deep personal sadness. Still, after the birth of my first child, I secretly looked forward to the end of nursing so I could go back to my pre-pregnancy drinking habits. To sum it all up, from my early twenties to my early thirties, I drank too much.
Before becoming a mother, I knew that my relationship with alcohol was troubled. I sought professional counseling — in part to find out if I really had a drinking problem — but was told that alcohol was not the root of my sadness. Others in whom I confided also tried to talk me out of my feeling that I had a problem with alcohol. After all, I held responsible professional positions, rarely drank before five o’clock in the afternoon, had a good relationship with my husband, exercised five times a week, and ate healthfully.
But once I took the responsibility for a child’s well-being, I tuned in to my own inner voice, which for years had been warning me about where my drinking might be headed. Thus I began a nearly decade-long search for ways to resolve my issues with alcohol. I had long periods of abstinence, punctuated by interludes of drinking. I saw that when I drank, my moods swung more dramatically. I sometimes forgot things my child had told me the night before. By degrees, I also saw what there was to be gained by not drinking: I liked myself better; I didn’t have to think about whether I could drive in the evening when I’d had a drink or two; I was emotionally available to my family; I slept better and had more energy.
In time, like so many of the people you are about to read about, I decided that what I enjoyed about drinking was overshadowed by the costs. I didn’t like the importance alcohol had assumed in my life, how inconsistent drinking was with the role model I wanted to be for my children. It simply took too much of my time and energy, and I realized that I was a much happier, more productive person when I wasn’t drinking.
Along the way I tried some of the conventional solutions for alcohol problems. Though I was impressed with how helpful AA was for others and I’d benefited from the support, I’d come home from a meeting feeling like the odd one out. My take-responsibility attitude — along with my tendency to challenge the status quo and want to do things my way — didn’t mesh with the program’s twelve-step philosophy. I wasn’t "in denial." I was looking for help but felt I had nowhere to turn. So I crafted my own rather lonely path to resolving my troubles with alcohol, with the help of some open-minded therapists who did not demand that I become abstinent or that I attend a recovery group but respected my ability to make the decision to stop drinking and encouraged me to develop my own strategies to do so.
For years after, I wondered whether I was the only person who had been able to stop drinking without using the conventional path of AA. I also felt frustrated about all the time and energy I’d spent looking for solutions, and upset that nothing that would have fit my needs much earlier on seemed to be available. I began to hear about alternative approaches to drinking problems. Every so often I read about people who had resolved alcohol problems on their own. I began to wonder whether there might be common threads in their stories. Perhaps identifying these similarities as well as the differences could help other people troubled by alcohol.
It bothered me too that the recovery stories I heard were always about down-and-out former drunks — not about people like me, who did something before their drinking got really bad. Having experienced firsthand a sense of loss after I gave up the substance that brought so much comfort and pleasure, I also wanted to know how people with very serious drinking problems — the ones who had seemingly lost it all — had managed to turn their lives around.
For answers, I decided to go out and find people who had once had drinking problems, big ones and small ones. In the spirit of my earlier books, about people who have lost weight and kept it off, Sober for Good stems from my fascination with how people change — how they solve difficult lifestyle and health issues that sometimes seem intractable. My hope is that these true experts can provide inspiration for all those who are still struggling. In my experience, when you’re trying to overcome a problem, nothing works better than the words of people who have been there.
Copyright © 2001 Anne M.Fletcher