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Don’t Give Up On Giving Up Alcohol! It’s a Worthwhile Journey | SDA53

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol, Year Two | 2 comments

Stop Drinking Alcohol 53 – Don’t Give Up (Transcript)

Hi, I’m Kevin O’Hara for Alcohol Mastery and this is Stop Drinking Alcohol 53.

Start of a brand new year and I’ve just been thinking about the website quite a bit and what my plans are for the coming year and I’d really like to expand it as much as possible.

I’d like to put a forum on there, I don’t know if people would be interested in and taking part in but I think there’s a lot of forums out there and I don’t think it costs that much to set one up.

I think it’s a good idea try it out anyway and see how it goes, I’d also like to set up a an area on the website that has got more structured videos mainly dealing with a lot of “self-help stuff” you know, dealing with a lot of the cravings and symptoms and all that kind of stuff.

My Growing Passion For This Work

During the day I work, I write articles for other people’s websites and I do a bit of coding as well for other peoples websites. I’m not a great coder by any means, it’s just basic simple stuff that I get paid a few quid for and it pays the bills here in Spain. But more and more I’m just being driven back to the site, I just love this stuff, I’m thinking about the website all the time.

I’m thinking about the channel, about addiction in general and self-help, all that kind of stuff. I love the people, the comments that I’m getting from people, some of them are amazing, stories from people who’ve quit and I can relate to so many of them. I can really feel the pain that some people are going through, because basically I went through similar things myself.

Understanding Yourself

I was supposed to be doing a video last week about exactly what I’d learnt during my first year since I quit and going back and reliving old times and I was just thinking about exactly who I was back then, what state my mind was in, the state my body was in. It was just very difficult; it was very, very difficult, very emotional. I nearly started crying at some stages because I don’t generally look back at past experiences, I don’t see much of a point in it unless there’s something to be gained from it, there’s no real point in looking backwards, you’re far better off looking forwards.

But in order to understand myself, in order to make any sense in these videos, I have to go back every so often and dissect parts of my life that I’d rather leave behind me. But when I have to do that, it’s not very nice, the picture I see is not very nice.

One Year On!

The idea that there are so many people who have gone through exactly the same shit is heart breaking. I’m one year on now and I can see that there’s no way on earth that I will go back there, when I go back to that thing I just think, I can’t ever go back there again, the more I learn about it, like there’s no blame for anything, there’s no blame for anyone.

Planning for the Future

So really, when I’m doing my normal day to day work, I just want to come back to this, I feel so strong about this now, I feel like this is something that I want to do for the rest of my life. How that works out, I want to give up my day job like I say, and I will do it by sometime this year. I’ll figure out the how’s and the how to’s, as I go along so wish me luck.

Have You Just Quit?

If you’ve quit drinking in January for the New Year and you’re still going fair play to you, keep it up. If you haven’t, if you’ve made a blunder and drank a little bit of the poison here and there then don’t worry about it, it’s not the end of the earth, just pick yourself up and keep going.

It’s one of the dangers, the pitfalls of people setting dates to quit, where they build themselves up to the New Year and a lot of the time what they do is they’ll go all out for the last few weeks, especially at Christmas time where there’s a lot of drink consumed. By the time January comes around, the last thing they want to see again is alcohol of some sort.

They quit for a while and it takes them a while to get over the actual alcohol content in their bodies. They’re not feeling any discomfort about not having any alcohol for a while. Then the discomfort starts to kick in and they might not be able to sleep and they give in.

The Best Time to Quit

In reality the best time to quit is right now, it’s in the moment, that’s the only time you can do anything is now in the moment. So it’s always going to be the best time and then if you fall off the horse so to speak, it’s a lot easier to get back up because there hasn’t been this big build up.

Think About Your Thinking

One of the things that you should do if you’ve had a drink is to think about situations that you were in when you were tempted, when you gave in. Think about who you were with, what you were doing, where you were, and most importantly what you were thinking in your mind. What kind of thoughts were you thinking? What mood you were in? These are all the important things for you to consider.

The thing about dissecting all this, what went wrong and who you were with, and all that kind of stuff, is that it gives you the ability to think about it the next time, to remember what triggered you to drink again. If you come across the same situation again then you’ll know it’s happening to you and if you know it’s happening to you it’s half the battle.

Real learning is about behavior change it’s not about learning something and doing nothing. If your behavior doesn’t change then you haven’t learned anything.

By looking at these things, by really sitting down and thinking about it… just don’t give up, don’t think well that’s it, I can’t stop, because that’s bullshit, you know.

Don’t think that if you have a drink you’ve got to start all the way back at the beginning again, you don’t!

Also, don’t think that if you fall off the wagon and you get back up you’ve got to start all the way back at the beginning again, you don’t.

If you do these things, if you ask yourself what went wrong and dissect it like that, then you’ve learnt about yourself, you’ve learnt a bit more about your own drinking habit and you’ve learnt something about the triggers.

Your Comfort Zone

It’s all about getting outside of your comfort zone. Once you can take that into your head that it’s not going to be a comfortable ride, but it’s not going to kill you. That’s basically all it boils down to, discomfort. Different levels of discomfort, I grant, but it is only discomfort and it all disappears.

So that’s the first video of the New Year, Stop Drinking Alcohol 53. I’ll have a video up during the week about what I learned in my year since I’ve quit drinking, so I’ll stick the link down below.

If you’ve got any questions then come over to the website and leave a comment there or leave a comment down on YouTube. If you have any questions about videos you want me to do, then I’d love to hear them as well.

If you’ve got any suggestions at all about what you’d like to see on the sight then I’m open to all suggestions, I’ve had a couple of suggestions already, its new directions.

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

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Stop Drinking Alcohol Week 50
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2 Comments

  1. CC Jaleel

    Thanx Kevin! Way to go…. ur inspiring!!!

    Reply
  2. Ruben

    One of my most favorite videos on your site. Thanks so much for all you do Kevin!!!

    Reply

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