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Are You Always an Alcoholic? You Quit & Still Have a Problem? | SDA43

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol, Year One | 1 comment

Are You Always An Alcoholic? Stop Drinking Alcohol Week 43 (Transcript)

I’m Kevin O’Hara for Alcohol Mastery and this is “Stop Drinking Alcohol Week 43”.

Archives of Alcohol Mastery

This week on the website I’ve added a search box over in the sidebar on the right-hand side. You can go down and click on it, and there’s a little drop-down box and you can see all the old archives. So you can see the videos from the beginning and it’s all done per month, so month by month.

I just thought of that as somebody said to me that they found it hard to navigate through the site. So at least until I can find something better, at least it’s some way to be able to go back and look at the old videos.

Addition of iTunes

I’ve also applied to and been accepted onto iTunes, so I’ll leave a link down the bottom of this post or there will be a link in the sidebar again on the website. Basically it’s just the audio of the videos for now; later on I hope to be able to do something better – do some proper weekly podcasts and do some interviews, that kind of thing.

If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. So if you have any suggestions, leave them down below in the comments. Also if you listen to these on iTunes, there’s an advantage in that you don’t have to look at this ugly face, but if you hear me, all this mad breathing and stuff like that, I’m actually up in the hills around where I live and I’m going up and down so sometimes the breathing gets a bit mad. That’s all it is now – it’s just breathing from walking.

The Language of Addiction

This week, I wanted to talk a little bit about the language of addiction from my perspective. You all know that I hate the words “alcoholic” and “alcoholism” and “relapse” and “recovery”, and all that crap. It’s all good for medical professionals to use, but when you start using it for yourself, especially when you’ve quit and trying to kick the habit, I think it’s just counter-productive.

My Experience

In terms of my own experience with this language of addiction: When my son was over at Christmas before I quit, we sat out on the balcony and we’d been out we’d had a few drinks. I brought up the subject of quitting drinking and I told him I was going to quit.

He was asking me why, and I basically said to him that I was an alcoholic. He got this horrified look on his face. He got really quite upset about it; about me using the word “alcoholic”. He basically said, “No you’re not an alcoholic”. I can understand why he said it, because there’s such a negative connotation to that word in the society that we live.

You’ve Quit, How Come You’re Still the One with the Problem

If you think about it, it’s the only drug in the modern world where when you actually quit, you’ve got a problem. When you’re taking it there’s no problem at all. When you quit, there’s a problem. I’ve had people coming up to me with pity! Seriously… Even after they say to me “Jesus, you look so much better now, you look fitter, you look healthier – it’s done you good,” and they’re sitting there lashing back the alcohol with the big red noses and the fat bellies, and they’re looking at me and you can see it in their eyes that they think that I’ve got a problem.

Let’s get it clear here! I’m not the one with the problem. I don’t have a problem anymore. I’m not the one sitting there shoveling poison down my throat anymore. When you quit drinking, something you can do for yourself is you can hold your head up high and you can say that you’re no longer stupid enough to pour poison inside your body. You’re no longer killing yourself. You’re no longer putting your health in jeopardy because of your drinking, because you’re putting alcohol inside yourself. I know that might sound like its okay for me to say because I’ve quit. But that’s the way it is – I have quit! And I’m saying, when I was drinking you just kid yourself that it’s not doing you any harm.

Oh Those Damned Smokes!

Quitting drinking for me was a fairly straightforward process. I knew that I was going to quit. But I know exactly what’s it’s like to go through time and time again and to sabotage yourself when you’re trying to stop doing something, stop a bad habit. When I quit smoking, it was terrible. Much of the time, I was my own worst enemy because of the language I was using with myself inside my own head. I would say, “I can’t do this. I can’t stop smoking. It’s killing me, this is killing me – stopping smoking.” I used to do things like I’d say to myself, “Look, I’ll smoke now for the night and then I’ll quit. I’ll just have the one. I’ll just have a pull. I’ll just have the one cigarette. I’ll just buy the one packet. I’ll just smoke for the night. Maybe just for the weekend. I’ll quit next week. I’ll just smoke for the week and see because I know I can quit now.”

I always knew at the back of my head that it was all bollocks… that I’d go back on it again. I’d be smoking again, full-time, in no time. Even if I’d give up, I’d smoke for a day and then I’d be able to stop for a while, and then smoke again and I’d be able to stop…But I’d still go back on it, full-time.

Anyway after that rather mad video, I’ll give it a break now.

Until next time…

My name is Kevin O’Hara for Alcohol Mastery.

Onwards and upwards!

Itunes Podcast

Thanks for visiting the site.
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
Kev

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1 Comment

  1. Don Rumpel

    Good video. thanks

    Reply

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