If somebody asks me how to quit drinking, I always advise them to seek a doctor or a psychiatrist before quitting. Quitting drinking is not a joke; it takes a lot of willpower, strong determination and the right resources. Moreover it can even be fatal in some cases if a doctor is not consulted.
Personally I struggled mightily with finding an answer to my drinking that actually led to long-term recovery. If you want to see a little more about my story visit the about me page – How I Quit Drinking.
Some people use medicine to help them stop (like anabuse). The great thing about medicine if you are a real heavy drinker is it can address the immediate effects of withdrawal. These immediate effects are tremors, headaches, high blood pressure, nausea, vomiting and hyperactivity etc.
The question is how to quit drinking when you are totally obsessed by your alcohol addiction? When you don’t want o drink again, but can’t imagine the idea of not drinking again. Certainly there are some strategies that can be adopted in order to stay away from drinking (see home page of this site), but there is no easy way for how to quit drinking. You have to be really serious about getting rid of your biggest enemy, alcohol, and freeing your mind from the obsession.
Honestly speaking, it takes many months to get out of the addiction syndrome. Chances of relapse prevail possibly forever in a recovering addict’s life. There are a lot of factors that if not taken care of may result in a relapse.
Let’s see how a recovering addict can fall back to his addiction habit.
How To Quit Drinking Relapse Risks
Enabling - This is a very common obstacle to how to quit drinking. Usually the enabling is done by the family members of an addict. Rather I would say the addict, with the help of his cunning and baffling disease, is done in spite of his families attempt at helping them.
Provoking - While the addict is busy in his addiction the family thinks that he is doing it deliberately and they usually initiate arguments with him about his failures in life and how cruel he is by not learning how to quit drinking once and for all. This usually leads to the alcoholic drinking again. So instead of getting him to the answer for how to quit drinking it can have the opposite affect. That is why Al Anon can be such a great resource for loved ones of alcoholics.
Contact with addicts – During recovery if a problem drinker keeps contact with his drinking buddies, relapse will likely occur. Euphoric recall is where a problem drinker develops a strong connection to a place where he used to drink. So if he goes back to those places, the euphoric recall can easily overpower the desire to stay sober.
Tension and depression - When an addict gets back to his normal life after treatment they may be faced with a lot of issues, such as financial loss, marriage problems, career issues, resentment from their spouse, etc., so when they are unable to deal with these issues relapse becomes more likely.
Similarly there are a number of other factors that come in the way of how to quit drinking. But with the help of some of the following strategies one can avoid relapse and can really learn how to quit drinking and at the same time love life.
How To Quit Drinking Resources
Rehabilitation centers – There are hundreds of rehabs offering treatment for alcohol addiction. It is considered the most logical answer as to how to quit drinking. At the rehab the alcoholic gets an environment where there is no availability of alcohol or any other kind of drug to him. They are given proper medications to get over the withdrawal symptoms. They learn different methods to avoid relapse in future. And they get to meet other people just like them.
12 step programs – This is a set of guiding principles that can be adopted for recovery from addiction and is used more than any other approach in recovery. It all started with Alcoholics Anonymous, but has moved on to numerous other addictions.
Counseling – Proper counseling is a great way to deal with life challenges and avoid relapse. A recovering alcoholic should continue follow up with sessions with their counselor.
All of the above mentioned strategies are helpful for recovery and to stay sober, but it all comes down to action and taking consistent action that facilitates your sobriety. How to quit drinking is not easy, and certainly wasn’t for me, but as they say, “when there is a will there is a way”. Be sure to check out on the home page of this site (click link above, or header on top) for programs. Also on the right you can see the “how to quit drinking” programs I reviewed – the one I have ranked highest to me stands high above the rest and their free offering is fantastic.
Best of luck! Chris
