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Who Or What Ties You to Alcohol for Life?

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol | 3 comments

Why do you drink alcohol? What is it that makes alcohol drinking stick with you? Is it your family? Is it your genetic inheritance? What about the “alcoholic disease”?

It is my belief that, although there might be a fragment of truth in each of these, mostly they are figments of somebody else’s imagination, another form of brainwashing for the masses!

We are so indoctrinated with this hogwash, drilled into us from an early age, that it’s almost as hard to break away from this thinking as it is to break away from the behaviour and the habit of drinking.

How’re you doing? I’m Kevin O’Hara for alcoholmastery.com

What is it exactly that ties you to drinking alcohol?

Family?

History?

Genes?

The fact that you have a disease and you can’t get away from it?

Most of these things are figments of someone else’s imagination, I think.

I used to think that the reason I drank alcohol was because it was a part of my cultural identity, and therefore a part of my individual, personal identity as an Irish man and as a strong person.

In reality, all that is bullshit.

It was a part of the propaganda, a part of my life that weakened me in so many different ways and continued until I stopped.

In reality, the only thing that ever links you to alcohol and keeps you in the alcohol life is you.

It’s your thoughts and your thoughts come from your brain.

It’s your brain.

Your thoughts lead to your actions, and its those actions of lifting the glass and taking a sop and swallowing it and doing it over and over again, that’s what keeps you bonded to alcohol.

It’s the only thing stopping you from drinking alcohol, it’s you.

Regardless of what way you look at this.

Once you understand the bonds of the habit and the behaviour…I talked about this before where the habit is like a hot air balloon.

We’ve got two hot air balloons that come from our local place every Sunday and they take people up.

There’s no chance I’m ever going to get in them, but that’s a different thing.

What I’m saying is that once it’s up in the air, the only thing that holds it up is the hot air.

The hot air is produced by the heat from the gas burning.

The balloon rises and without the hot air, the balloon just falls and crashes.

It’s the same thing with alcohol drinking behaviour.

Without the alcohol, without the behaviour holding up the habit, then the whole habit just collapses around.

But you also have to fill the gaps that are left with something else, otherwise, you can’t have a behavioural backing.

So you’ll be going backwards all the time.

You’re going to keep wanting to go back because what else is there?

Your mission is to fill those gaps with as many positive, inspiring, motivational things as you can, things you want to do, things you like doing.

Your mission is also to change the parts of your life that you don’t like.

Change the things that are driving you to drink; the environment, people, thoughts.

Change all of them.

It’s hard to find exactly what’s happening at the beginning but it’s a gradual process.

You just take the things you understand now and work on those.

Other things will be uncovered.

As you work on one thing and deal with one thing, you peel back the layer and find another area of your life that you can deal with.

You can say ‘I’ve got this now’.

You have a bit of self-confidence and understand that you can deal with this now.

You can deal with problems, and it gives you the opportunity to deal with something else.

The whole point of this video is that if you believe that your alcohol habit revolves around your culture, or round your friendships, or you being an alcoholic, or you having a disease or an alcoholic gene, then that’s something which is going to affect you for the rest of your life.

That’s a scary thought.

Something you can’t get rid of, something completely out of your control.

When someone says this is a disease…

They always say ‘the disease of alcoholism’.

Nobody has to say ‘the disease of cancer’ or ‘the disease of osteoporosis’.

All my videos are doing, are trying to foster independence.

Listen to the facts.

Listen to yourself.

Listen to what’s going on in your own body, things that will help push you forward and not drive you back.

Once you have the facts, make an informed and intelligent decision on your own behalf.

You don’t have to listen to someone else calling it a disease; a disease they only cared about 50 years ago.

What was it before then?

There’s just so much bullshit in the world that leads people down the wrong path, that sort of takes away from people’s abilities to help themselves.

I think that’s your biggest asset, your ability to help yourself.

Regardless of what you do, if you go to AA, you still have to help yourself.

If you go to a dry out clinic, you still have to help yourself.

It all boils down to not putting the stuff in our mouth.

You can’t have people around you 24 hours a day trying to stop you from drinking.

That’s not possible or practical, and is just not going to happen.

There’s not one person that it going to spend their lives around you.

Maybe if you’ve got lots of money you can hire someone to do that, but for the most of us, we’re not going to.

Even if you have the money to do that, are you going to get them to put in the effort for you?

You can’t pay someone else to do the press-ups for you.

If you want to build muscles on your body, you have to do it yourself.

If you want to lose weight, you’ve got to diet and exercise.

You can’t get anyone else to lose it for you.

You have shortcuts where you stick a tube in and they suck all the fucking fat out, but what does that do?

It doesn’t do anything for your mentality, or the food that has gone in.

It’s not doing anything to clear the blockage in your heart because of the food.

It’s the same thing with quitting alcohol.

The whole thing is to make it easy for you to move forward and make it hard to move backwards.

Anything like calling yourself an alcoholic, using the word ‘sober’, anything that links you to y our past, don’t use it.

It’s not a word you should be using.

You didn’t use the word before you were a drinker.

So why would you use it now?

You used to drink, you don’t drink anymore.

Same thing with people who call themselves ex-smokers. You don’t smoke anymore.

Words are incredibly powerful.

It influences your mind, the directions you take and your motivation. Use them wisely.

These are things that will hold you back and tie you to your drinking past.

It’s the things you need to snip away, all those little ties holding you to your drinking past.

If that takes getting rid of relationships or changing your environment or anything in your life, then do it.

Snip away at those ties.

That’s it for today.

I’m going to continue walking.

If you have any questions, leave them down below.

Come on over to the website, we have lots of information there to help you out.

Subscribe to the newsletter.

Until next time, take care of yourself, keep the alcohol out of your mouth and keep snipping away at those ties.

Take care.

YOU ARE YOUR OWN BIGGEST OBSTACLE.

Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!

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3 Comments

  1. Peter

    Another good one Kevin. Two things I liked:

    – “Alcohol continues to weaken you until you quit.” This should be a very sobering (no pun intended) reality for everyone who ingests alcohol on a regular basis. The effects of alcohol are both immediate and also cumulative. The aging process naturally weakens all of us over time, but those who drink on a regular basis are weakening themselves prematurely. Your later years will be less about enjoying life with a healthy body and more about dealing with the lack of energy and related diseases that are married to the regular ingestion of alcohol.

    – I also appreciate your thoughts on the old school (AA endorsed) perspective that those who do not control their alcohol consumption are somehow fundamentally different than those who do. That is a big lie that perpetuates the life-long need for membership in their club of self-professed “diseased alcoholics”. It may work to keep some members sober, but those are the minority who prefer to mindlessly follow the AA doctrines regardless of the lack of scientific proof to substantiate their claims. I could never see myself joining a club that requires me to constantly chant their doctrine of “alcoholism, the disease and/or genetic defect that I am screwed with for life”.

    Reply
  2. Scott

    Hi Peter (and Kevin),

    Can’t belive how long it took me to discover KO’s videos! What he says resonates so much with me

    I’ve been a multiple decades long drinker that finally tried AA and even rehab (could only take 2 days of it). What didn’t work with me was hearing the constant mantra(s) of hopelessness, powerlessness, weakness, the requirement to find a higher power, etc.
    Being compelled to “share” which was largely for most just dredging up the past and talking about how bad they were and how weak/powerless they are over alcohol. An emotional/guilt laden treadmill…
    Kevin kicks that approach straight in the balls. WE put the drink in our mouth, WE are in control. We make the choice to drink or not. And we choose to either move into the future or let the past pull us back.

    I also agree that alcoholism is not a disease. It is a bad habit that developes over time. Simple as that…

    I wish I had discovered Mr. O’Hara years ago. He makes so much common sense…

    I also hope to one day to meet him, shake his hand, thank him and maybe share a cup of coffee.

    Scott
    Alberta, Canada

    Reply
  3. Julie

    A Really wonderful video Kevin. I was always brought Up to think that it was just part of the culture and part of every meal and partying occasion and my background is half Irish and half Polish and it actually is ridiculous because it isn’t an a part of anything but you get that mindset and you think that this is where it should be when this is not the way it should be .
    I like the videos because they focus on a distinct aspect of how to fix a problem or multiple problems that are true to life .And you have really helped a lot and yes I too hope someday to be able to meet you and buy you a meal thanks for everything. Julie

    Reply

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