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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 8:59 am and is filed under Causes of Problem Drinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.