The Alcohol Free Social Life!

If you have been drinking too much, I would like to ask you to think about why it is that you are drinking too much.

Is it for the following reasons:

Boredom

Low Self-Esteem

Work/Stress

Money Worries

Relationship Issues

Habit of Drinking

Grief

Other Issues

 It is very important to work out what are the underlying causes of your alcohol drinking. In some cases, this is more important than just focusing on the actual alcohol drinking. Often, just changing your routine or who you spend a lot of time with, will automatically deal with the alcohol problem.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully be meeting the author of a book on moods and managing your moods. I am hoping to feature her material in the new version of the alcohol course I am working on. Now, she says in order to improve your mood - which is a key reason for drinking alcohol - to change your mood - there are five elements you can look to.

Surroundings, your physical health, relationships, what you know and being yourself and expressing yourself are keys to making a difference. I went to a workshop with her where she said someone was depressed but as soon as they changed their home, the depression suddenly disappeared.

Certainly something like doing regular physical exercise (as long as you check with your medical practitioner you are ok to start beforehand) cannot but help to get you automatically feeling better about yourself and hopefully less likely to reach for a drink.

Relationships is a simple one - there are some people with whom it is seemingly impossible not to be able to spend time without drinking or others who almost cause you to need to drink!

Competence in yourself and what you can do - creates confidence as I have been told. Alcohol can be a way of dealing with the emotional pain of not being good enough, so investing in your skill-set and expertise might be a way of overcoming these feelings.

Expressing yourself in my view has something to do with doing what you love. If you have to conform to something you are not really invested in, then you are not going to feel good. Alcohol may dampen the pain in the short run but only by making big changes will you be able to start feeling better about your life. It can be a scary thing to contemplate which is why the alcohol is a nice way of dealing with this. But the side-effects and the long-term price you are paying is a high one.

So, please look deeply into why you are drinking too much and also whether you can make some changes which might have an immediate and almost automatic effect on your drinking.

A key problem leading to alcohol is simply the habit of drinking. You are so used to reaching for a drink at a certain time in a certain place that that is the way life is. You have not questioned it.

This was exactly the case for me when I was drinking. Two to three times per week, I would go out either with my friends for a meal and then to a bar or after my acting class on a Friday night. It was almost like a ritual and alcohol was the one factor  Icould be sure of.

The same can go for people who drink a glass of wine or more each evening after work or when the kids have gone to bed etc.

If you can stop before this happens and realise it is almost like an automatic response you can plan for other activities instead. E.g. drinking a soft drink or glass of water or even changing the way you drink - drinking more slowly or with food etc.

Just some way in which you break the unconscious habit so you don’t get out of control with your drinking. This can mean you can keep drinking without losing control or even take a break.

So please look at your habits. When do you drink? Is it something you have come to expect and almost would defend your right to do this vigorously? Well, if you are reading this blog then this habit has got to change in some way. Once you become aware of the habit you can start asking yourself what new habit do you want to do instead - e.g. go for a run after work instead of a glass of wine, going to the cinema on Friday nights instead of to the bar or changing the type of drink or how you drink it.

Please let me know your ideas as to what your habits with alcohol are and how you will change them.

One of the most rewarding but also challenging things we can do in life is to raise a family, especially with yound children who can demand all of your time, energy and attention. In situations like this, it can be very tempting to turn to a glass of wine or cold beer to relax yourself.

If this is your situation, I would like to refer you to the Drink Aware website which has an article about this:

http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/alcohol-and-you/young-parents

They refer to a survey of 3,000 mothers of young children conducted by the website Netmums.com. Of these, half of mums drank at home three or four times per week and about one quarter said they drank over the recommended limit.

This suggests that it is unfortunately a very common situation. Obviously if it is only one drink, enjoyed slowly and without pressure to drink anymore, that is fine. However the problem comes when one drink leads to another and another. According to the Drinkaware article, women are recommended to have no more than 2 to 3 units of alcohol per day. A half bottle of wine can have 4 to 5 units. so that would put you over the limit and be damaging to your health.

So, what can you do about it? Drink Aware recommends a few things, including eating before you drink, swapping the alcohol for soft drinks some days and doing things with your partner which do not involve drinking. You can also look at changing your routine so not watching tv or doing your usual activities. Also, when you do drink, drink slowly and savour each sip.

Also think about other thing s you can do like yoga at home or having a nice relaxing bubble bath etc. Find other ways to deal with the stress so that when you do drink, you are doing it to enjoy it and not as way of relaxation or dealing with stress etc.

I would like to write this blog entry about a subject which many people do not associate with being a key cause of alcohol problems.

From the Alcohol Survey I conducted recently and which you can still take part in at
Click Here to take survey

I found that the majority of readers of the site are women over 35, and in fact even older. So, this syndrome of empty nesters which is where your children have left home or moved on with their lives and do not need your direct daily involvement can cause a huge void and feelings of emptiness.

These may be just one part of a whole range of issues leading you to drink. Some of them could be your relationship with your partner which may need to be looked at again or even changed in some way. If you are living on your own now, it could be much harder without your children or company in general.

So, the key is to see how do you need to adapt to your current situation. What do you need to do differently?

One of the best things is to look at how you spend your time, whether working or socially. Who do you spend it with and how does this lead to drinking too much?

The best ways are to find activities, or work, or volunteering opportunities which you think you will enjoy and work on those. Maybe reconnecting with old friends or colleagues and family, visiting them around the world.

If you have more disposable income and leisure time, alcohol can often be a filler of a void. However, it is only numbing the pain and not leading to you feeling a warmer and more enjoyable life. So the advice in this post is quite open ended in that you may need anything from relationship counselling or to expand your horizons and look at new activities.

 As I am learning, one of the keys is to get out of your comfort zone. You might have become so used to living your life in a particular way with the same habits, people, events, routines in your life that frankly it is a little bit boring.

So, you need to break out of that in both big and small ways. Everything from going out for a night instead of being at home, to taking up a new sport such as rock climbing, scuba diving etc to going to new events or learning new skills or even changing your career or the type of work you do.

Only you can tell what you are avoiding exploring and doing but if you are an empty nester then you need to do something else to fill the void of your children leaving and giving you meaning to your life.

We saw in another post that many people with low self-esteem drink a lot to make up for the emptiness or numb feelings inside. Alcohol can provide a warm, cozy feelings and slightly lessen the critical inner voice.

Well, as I understand it low self-esteem and depression can be related. This is one area which needs to be handled and by working on this, you can automatically start to reduce the need for alcohol as a way of relaxing you.

One book I recommend is Feeling Good by David Burns, which uses cognitive behavioral  therapy.

There is a chart in this book called Burns Depression Checklist. I recommend you fill it in to see what level you are at. Obviously this is only a rough guide and is not to replace advice from your medical practitioner but it is a useful guide to see where you are currently at emotionally.

http://tinyurl.com/lg999t

Do not panic if you have a high score! But it is a useful tool to see if this is an area you need to be seriously spending some time and energy working on.

In the Alcohol Course I offer, there is a section called SMART Recovery (Self-Management And Recovery Training) which is cognitive-behavioral therapeutic techniques focused on dealing with alcohol issues. Please go to www.alcoholfreesociallife.com to start working on this right now.

Some of the reasons for you drinking alcohol can actually go much deeper than you imagine and be quite painful for you to face upto.

You might think it is because of stress at work but there might be situations which feel impossible to deal with. I have had one mother e-mailing me telling me her children were out of control they didn’t listen to her and it drove her mad. The way she wrote the e-mail it was clear that the issues were deeper - her own self-esteem and lack of belief in herself meant her kids did not believe her when she went to discipline them or set boundaries.

Another common problem is with obligations or situations you feel you have or should do such as dealing with elderly parents, children as we saw before or situations where you feel trapped and can’t get out of.

They may not be instantly obvious when you are thinking about why you are drinking too much. Once you find them and confront them - they can be massively painful in the short term because of the fears and guilt. But long-term, you will feel a lot better and in fact everyone should be better off.

So, examine your own life and look deeper.

213 people have now filled in the survey, over 70 more than last time.

So, let’s see what the main results of why people drink are.

Boredom is still the No.1 cause of drinking with 55.7% of people saying this was a reason why they were drinking too much. Once more low self-esteem was at No.2 with 38.0% saying this.

Relationship and work issues came close with about 32% each. So even though 70 more people have filled in the survey, the results still are the same, across age and sex differences.

 What are your views on this? Is this a reason why you also drink too much? If so, tell me more about it, if not, what are the other reasons?

One reason people have given in the survey as to why they drank too much was loneliness. Now being lonely does not have to mean that you are not in a relationship.

In one of David Burns M.D.’s books, he mentions that many people in relationships can also feel lonely.

One thing to do is to focus on the solution and not on the problem. If you focus on the problem - the feelings of loneliness, you will quickly enter feelings of self-pity and abandonment and then not do anything about it. These feelings can also get quite addictive as I myself have found before.

But if you are ready to meet new people, then there is a website I strongly recommend called www.meetup.com. This is a website designed for people to set up groups based around their passions and then meet people who like similar things. From going to the cinema, theatre, to sports events, language learning, even singles events, music, science fiction, alternative therapies, business networking. There are hundreds and hundreds of groups in London for example.  

You could end up spending a lot of time on this website as wherever you live in the world, there are groups. You can even create your own one.

Obviously the next thing is to go to these kinds of events whether through Meetup.com or with your own friends. And most importantly interact and give your full attention rather than wondering who will be your friend etc.

If loneliness is an issue, you might have to examine and work on your thinking because it might have become bitter and twisted or plain illogical. I recommend David Burn’s book on Feeling Good to be able to identify your thoughts - about loneliness and then change them around.

You will be really glad you did. So get out there and meet some new people today. Post your experienced below.

I am very happy to report that so far 143 people have taken the Alcohol Survey. It has been really eye-opening to understand the real life problems people are experiencing. All over the world some of the major issues crop up again and again.

The first thing which surprised me was the age profile of people with issues. In the media we are so used to reading about teenage or college student binge drinkers. But in the survey, 38% of people were between 45-54 years of age. The next biggest group was 35-44 years of age. A quarter were in the younger 25-34 and then the 55-64 age categories.

Let’s get onto the main issues concerned.

The first question was an open-ended question:

What is your main problem/concern with alcohol? 

The top 3 responses with over 20% of people responding were:

1. Can’t Stop Drinking When You Have Started or have had one drink

2. Feel The Need To Drink or you are drinking too much

3. Worries and concerns about your physical health

There were also many comments about worrying about what happened when you were drunk and the guilt and remorse felt the next day. Many people also just wanted to cut down and stop alienating their families.

What Are Your Reasons For Drinking?

Surprisingly by far the biggest response was Boredom. I had a multiple choice question and over 50% of people across age groups mentioned this as their number one issue.

 Here are the main issues with the number of people who mentioned them:

1. Boredom - 65 people mentioned this out of 143

2. Low Self-Esteem 52

3. Relationship Issues 45

4. Work and Economy: 40

5. Family Issues: 24

Others

6. Stress Relief

7. Because Alcohol is Fun

8. Habit

People who had suffered from abuse also had an issue here. Grief was also an issue for some of the older participants in the study.

Please could you let me know your thoughts about everything above. Does this make sense to you? Do you have the same issues or are there other things which make you turn to drink?

Please leave a comment so other people can learn from your experiences and we can start a discussion around this. If any of these areas touch you - e.g. boredom and relationship issues please post a little about what your specific situation is here so others can learn from you

Thanks,

Rahul

P.S. If you want to still take part in the Alcohol Survey, please click here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=JadJvps7S_2f_2bqN6kl8U30iA_3d_3d

Strangely enough one of the reason why people drink heavily is simply due to boredom.

It may not really seem like a valid reason or even that it could be a strong enough reason for you to be drinking heavily. Surely people only drink heavily because they are depressed, stressed or have had some horrific life events causing them to turn to the bottle?

 Well, the causes are often not that exotic. They can be as straightforward as you having gotten into a regular routine or pattern in which drink is your excitement and provides your release from the hum-drum of everyday life.

Part of this is just because it has become comfortable to live this way and you can get some security and satisfaction from having a routine in which you know what you will be doing, when and with whom. You might even start to forget about the other options available to you.

This is certainly one factor for me when I started drinking heavily. I was working two or three days per week and had a lot of free time. However most of my friends were not around when I was free plus I didn’t have a lot of money. So, I could not wait for those evenings when I would meet my friends for a meal and then go drinking.

That was my entertainment for the week and what I really looked forward to. So, only by realising this and then making changes could I really start to overcome the boredom issue.

So, do you think this is also an issue for you? If so, what can you start to do differently? It could be as simple as changing the venue you go to for leisure, or changing up your routine and trying new hobbies or activities.

One thing someone once advised me to do was for a week, try different routes to go to work. So if you always drive try taking public transport, car pooling or taking a different route. Something different which will shake up your routine.

When you do something new, your brain has to get off auto-pilot and start paying attention which becomes much more interesting for you.

You can brainstorm, look on the internet for different things to try or just ask your friends for their suggestions as to what to do differently.

Also visit www.alcoholfreesociallife.com for the Give Up Alcohol course which will explain more powerful ways of introducing variety into your life, so you are not so dependent on alcohol.