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The Key to Success in Quitting is to Keep Things to the Basics

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol | 2 comments

The key to success of quitting drinking is always going to be keeping things as simple as possible. Keeping to the basics. The basics are really, take a given situation, right, any situation that you’re going to be in, either prior to quitting, while you preparing to quit, cutting down on alcohol or when you’re quitting – whatever situation you’re in.

To keep the solution down to the simplest possible thing, right. So, you know, complexity is your enemy. Every time you complicate things. Every time you try and make things more complex than they really are or they should be, right, you add a layer of doubt. You add a layer of, you add on just a layer of confusion that shouldn’t be there. You know?

As I say simplicity is the key. If you can find the simplest solution. What you do is, you don’t have to think too much about it, you just do it. You don’t have to overwhelm yourself with the situation that you’re in and you don’t overwhelm yourself with choices.

You know, that’s one of the problems that we’ve got today, in our society today, is that we’ve so many choices, in so many different areas of our lives, that we just overwhelm ourselves everywhere and we use up our thinking power, you know, our brain power, the energy that we’ve got to do these things in, very quickly.

And we end up just being. You know like – the fight or flight response – where you would normally fight in a situation. All you can do is, is sit there, like the bird does and hope that nobody sees you, you know. And hope that the situation goes away. Because you haven’t got the energy to do anything else you know.

So, keep things simple, avoid complexity. When you’re thinking about this, when you’re thinking about quitting, right. And you’re planning out what you’re going to do in certain situations, when you get into this. You need to sort of narrow down your choices to as few as possible.

Narrow down your choices to as few as possible. If you can get it down to just one right, as I say, if you can get it down to just one simple solution for every situation that you’re in.

Like for instance, if you’re craving. Now one of the things that I found when I stopped drinking alcohol, was the biggest force behind my cravings, was thirst. That was the biggest trigger. And if you can get yourself to a situation where you think about, as soon as you think about taking a drink, right, you get a craving for drink. Take a half a litre of water and drink it down. There and then, right, or even a quarter of a litre of water, but make that your go to thing, right?

As soon as you get a craving this is what you do, you drink water. And it’s a simple solution and most of the time it’s going to work for you, right? No complexity, you don’t have to think about it, you just do it – right? So, no matter what it is, think up simplest solutions, no complexity, no overwhelm and you’ll find it’s a lot easier for you to overcome cravings, to deal with things in life, you know.

That’s just not for quitting drinking, this is for anything in life, simplicity beats complexity hands down every time. They say that complexity is, they say that complexity is something that people do when they can’t find the simple solution. But there’s always a simple solution right. You know people can get the simple solution first and then over think it and make things complex, you know, make things more complicated that they need to be. So, don’t do that you know.

Just a short one today. Take Care of Yourself, Keep Safe, Keep the alcohol out of your Mouth.

Good Luck.

“Everything is simple – it’s people who complicate things”

Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!

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2 Comments

  1. Peter

    I spent too much time considering every possible scenario that I might encounter when re-entering my social world as a non-drinker. I needed to simplify my approach and concentrate on becoming comfortable with my decision. There was really only one important thing I needed to establish and that was to become confident that my choice to stop ingesting alcohol was based on sound logic and ultimately in my best interest and the best interest of those I love. Yes, simplify, simplify, simplify (H.D. Thoreau).

    Reply
  2. Mick

    Keeping it simple is the answer, but the human brain loves problems, its like a dog with a bone. Given even half a chance it will ruminate, go round and around the same thoughts, unhelpful thoughts.

    Creating an auto response like drink a bottle of water is a great idea. I used to do that at tea time when I would get my first proper drink alcohol thoughts, eventually the habit of drinking the water just replaced the 2 stage process of wanting alcohol, drink some water.

    The fact that I have my alcohol addiction in the past now, makes my thoughts of how I used to feel about it difficult to recall. But one of the most unhelpful thoughts I used to have was I just want a rest bite from life, an instant end to my problems, what I actual wanted was simple way to stop thinking about my wows for a while, I knew that alcohol wouldn’t fix them, if anything I knew it would make the worse.I always knew that. But the emotion that daily wows combined with an addiction for alcohol for me created an emotion that was close to fear. If you have fear your body is hard wired to take take immediate action. So the desire to drink alcohol becomes very strong, using your own survival instincts against you.

    I don’t think I ever developed a truly affective auto-response to this. Other than once I understood that the alcohol I had previously drunk caused a chemical to be active in my body, a chemical that made me sad and mentally weak.A chemical that made mole hills look like mountains, I started to see the drug for what it was, this helped me develop a commitment that overrode the powerful emotions that I sometimes experienced. These gradually became less and less over a relatively short period of time.

    I have often thought about this and the best advice I can offer to anyone is that, these emotions do pass and just like stubbing your toe its hard to remember the discomfort in detail after its past. It may be your thinking your problems are of biblical proportions and no one could handle it or just simply that your stuck in a rut and life is dull. But its important to remember its not the problems but your thoughts about them that cause the discomfort. A wart on your ear can seam worse than a tidal wave in a far of land but that doesn’t make it so. The discomfort will pass and you will end up with a feeling of being liberated and with far more mental and physical strength, able to get stuck into lives challenges.

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