Originally Posted by Hawkeye13

I just listened to “Alcohol Explained” by William Porter this past week—I thought I had a pretty solid understanding of psychology and physical impact of drinking, but this book really did connect a few dots of why I kept choosing to relapse, despite not wanting to, knowing it would not be rewarding for more than a few minutes, and that I could never stop at one drink. So we drink more—a lot more for most of us, right?

We all know that even though the first drink is deeply craved, it wears off so quickly we keep going, because in fact we feel more anxious and worse after just one because our body, due to our past patterns of over-drinking, releases stimulants to offset the (anticipated) depressive effect of the alcohol. So if we were anxious and stressed, we are even more so after a drink or two, and thus we actually feel worse—more stressed and anxious from the stimulants as well as the original causes craving / drive to take the first drink.

Porter suggests that our subconscious mind gets conditioned over time to the idea that another drink is the only thing that will “fix” things, and then another, and another due to delay time of getting the “hit” from the booze. This is the downward spiral all of us know too well. We end up drinking way more than we planned, and this in a nutshell is why we cannot moderate drinking ever, even if there are decades between the relapses.

The subconscious mind doesn’t forget—and we are right back where we left off or worse. The only drink we really have “control” over is the first one for a true addict. So not taking that one is the key—and the next steps are reprogramming of how we deal with stress in a healthier ways to take us further down the path to healing ourselves.

It isn’t hopeless, it is just making new patterns for our lives—better ones, in fact. . .