You can stop drinking on your own. Indeed, most people either stop or moderate their alcohol consumption without any outside assistance. However, having said that, and being someone who did that on his own some 35 years ago I will also say that is much easier with a bit of short-term, confidential, individual and experiential support and information. What takes me – and probably you – three years should really take no more than three months. Yes, it took me 3 years of stumbling around to get the information, experiment with various approaches, assimilate the new knowledge, and leave my problems behind. It all started with my confidence that if my only two options were being an alcoholic and joining AA I’d rather be an alcoholic. I know many of us agree. Happily there is a lot of choice and it will help to understand that the research, as summarized in Hester and Miller’s Handbook of Alcoholism Treatment Approaches shown that in terms of effectiveness AA based treatment ranks 36th, and AA 38th. Obviously you wouldn’t voluntarily put money on a “cure” that ranked in those positions in the race! So what does work?
1: Brief intervention which is basically taking a bit of time out to think about things and gather information. I’m hoping that’s what you’re doing now and what brought your here. After that the effective tools include such approaches as CBT, Motivational Enhancement, naltrexone, assertiveness training, and so on. And with clients, I help them create a mosaic of approaches which make the changes easier to achieve.
