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How To Spend Time With Heavy Drinking Family and Friends When You’ve Quit

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Spending Time With Heavy Drinking Family and Friends When You’ve Quit? (Transcript)

I’m Kevin O’Hara for Alcohol Mastery and today I’m gonna be talking about a question I got over on the website about quitting drinking when you’re still having to be around heavy-drinking family and friends.

Do Your Own Thing

I’ve had this question before about whether it’s right to try and help other people to quit drinking.

I don’t think it’s a great idea unless you’re very close to the person and you can see them doing some real damage to themselves. It just doesn’t work out well, people don’t like it when you say to them, “You should cut back your drinking”.

I think the best approach is to just carry on yourself to do your own thing, to live your own life and quit drinking, and in 6 months’ time when you’re not drinking anymore, you’ve more money in your pocket, you look better, you look healthier, you look slimmer, you’re able to think better, I think people will look at you then and they’ll realize themselves. I can completely attest to this fact, its what I’m seeing myself.

My Experience

The amount of people that come up to me, especially the ones that haven’t seen me for a few months say “Jesus, what have you been doing?”

So I say I quit the drinking and stuff.

First, one of the most popular questions is “What are you doing with yourself now that you’ve quit drinking?” as if drinking is the be all and end all.

So yeah I’m walking every day, I’m swimming, I do yoga, I go away on holidays, I have more money in my pocket, I’m able to buy clothes for myself. There’s so many different positive aspects to it, it’s great.

You’re Numero Uno!

You really have to do it for yourself, first and foremost.

When I was drinking I really felt like it was some sort of a shared nightmare. But that’s what it feels like sometimes, when everywhere you go people are just drinking.

No matter what you do and what situation you get into with people – there’s drink involved.

And once you drink like I did – you don’t drink for the sake of the taste, you’re drinking for the sake of the buzz – then it really does get on top of you after a while.

Wake Up Call

All it takes is one person in the group to wake up and see what’s really going on and start to change their lives.

And I think that positive change then starts to affect the other people around, especially in family situations and with really good friends, the friends that you don’t want to get rid of.

When I stopped drinking a lot of my friends, they were carrying on going to the pub and I just lost touch with them because I couldn’t go to the pub anymore, so they stopped being friends.

They were drinking buddies more than friends anyway. But I think proper friends and family…

Be An Inspiration

I think once a person starts to show the signs of going in a good direction and like I said the money’s saved and the way that you’re looking – you’re looking better, you’re feeling better. They just see the positive impact in your life.

Some people will start to actually visualize themselves in your position. And that’s the first step, it’s all that it takes for some people…just for one person to make that spark in another person’s brain and they start thinking, “Jesus, that could be me! What I’m doing is sort of screwing around with my life”. And they start mulling it over in their head, then make the comparisons to you. And like I said, maybe that’s all they need.

You also have to look at it in their perspective that in a group of people – family, friends, that kind of thing – maybe everyone is thinking about it. Maybe everyone’s thinking “Jesus, I wouldn’t mind getting away from this drink” but nobody wants to be the first one to do it. So, again, you never know what other people are thinking.

So I really think you should bite the bullet and have the courage to be the first one to quit drinking.

I think other people will thank you in the long run.

My dad’s always telling me how much of an inspiration I am to the rest of the family. I do notice that people that have cut down a lot; maybe it’s because I’m not encouraging them so much anymore to drink.

I know it’s not practical for some people with families, but if you can try and just stay away from people for a while until you’re building up your mental reserve, you’ve been off it for a few weeks, then you might be able to go back then with a fresh mind. That might work for you.

I hope that helps anyway, and I hope it answers some of your questions. If you’ve got any more questions on this topic or if you’ve got any comments, leave them down below. Or go to the website and do the same over there.

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My name is Kevin O’Hara for Alcohol Mastery.

Onwards and upwards!

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

 

Spending Time With Heavy Drinking Family and Friends When You've Quit?

 

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