61–70 of 243 posts
Try Alan Carr's "Easy Way To Stop Drinking". Addiction perpetuates itself partly through false beliefs, this book goes through and debunks all of them. I used his guide to quit smoking, and it was really helpful.
Please find a meeting near you. http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/
No, please don't. http://skepfeeds.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/alcoholics-anonymo... There are more effective, non religious, evidence based treatments for addiction. Edited to add: Penn and Teller covered AA here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yUG9dr6SZSY Also: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/75-years-a...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 on this. Religion can take you down some dangerous paths too. Stick to scientific and medical methods.
I agree. It is also important to avoid the pseudoscience in the scientific establishment though; for example, the entire psychiatric manual has been thoroughly discredited in the 70s, but that is not communicated openly.
My father died of alcoholism and whatever we said to him or do wouldn't change a thing in his mind. That's a very strong addiction and he didn't stop even when doctors told him he's in terminal phase. I believe the change has to come from inside of you and you must identify where it all started and what was it's trigger and treat that first. I have nicotine issues but I stopped smoking in favor of e-cigs. Nicotine is…
I'm in your same boat, nicotine is part of what makes me what I am, I feel totally depressed and unable to function without it (tried, for months). I followed your same trajectory (cigarettes -> ecigs), then found Swedish snus, much much simpler than ecigs (no batteries, liquids, etc.), 100+ yrs of history so no unknown long term side-effects, and all the nicotine you need plus some. You might want to give it a try,…
If, on the other hand, you are like me an you simply drink too much, I can share how I got the situation under control.
First, I threw out a lot of the liquor in the house (I kept the good whiskey that I was already saving for a special occasion). Then, I stopped going out to bars as often and, to a certain extent, avoided people I typically drank with or found ways to socialize without being around alcohol. I also took up yoga in the mornings. I like yoga, but if I drink the night before, I won't feel like waking up for it. So, I remind myself before I go out to a pub or meet friends that if I drink, I'm screwing up my routine.
That combination has helped, and it's gotten me to a place where I can go out on a Saturday night, get a nice buzz going with three or four beers over several hours, without reaching that 'fuck it' moment where I start doing shots and smoking cigarettes till dawn.
As another poster mentioned, addiction is about getting away from some kind of unbearable inner pain. I'll share mine, what I did to get deaden it, and how I finally healed it. I'm 31 now, have a wife, exciting job, close friends, and most of all, I'm happy. My pain comes form severe bullying; I got beaten up literally every day as a child for three years. After that, I finally got transferred to another school, but…
National Geographic channel had a program on recently about how DMT and LSD are making a comeback for curing addictions and painful pasts.
Test for ADD/ADHD. Seriously. Many people with ADD/ADHD end up in the IT business. Drinking and drug problems, nicotine and caffeine addiction, high-risk behaviours and family issues are very common among ADD/ADHD people. The reason behind this: low dopamine and norepinefrine levels in the ADD/ADHD brain. Those low levels create a very high reward threshold, so people with ADD/ADHD tend to unconsciously seek for stro…
I feel like it's not really possible to be tested for ADD as an adult without just coming across as a person seeking amphetamines. Which is funny, considering how eager child psychiatrists are to hand out diagnoses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can this be corrected?
Not at all. You can take Ritalin and Adderall, but that will give you the personality of an accountant and take away your creative problem solving skills.
Please find a meeting near you. http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/
Religion is no better substitute to alcoholism!
That said, there are a lot of us atheists (and, of course, people whose religious/spiritual beliefs, if they have them, are incompatible with the ever-present whiff of Christianity ) who have managed to recover in AA. The steps (with one exception, explained later) can be divorced from the idea of the supernatural, and actually boil down to an effective cognitive/behavioural therapy. (They have been re-written many times, but because of frictions with mainstream AA, it's difficult to find the secularized versions published anywhere outside of the agnostic/atheist groups.) The only fly in the ointment, I suppose, would be the fifth step, which requires one to posit an all-knowing entity. It doesn't require believing that one exists; it's more a recognition that trying to hide things from yourself, to rationalise things that aren't rational, or to take on more blame or responsibility than you honestly ought to own is futile and counterproductive.
There are more than a handful of us working to fix this. I wish I could say the battle is an easy one. Frankly, one gets a little tired of hearing (after nearly thirty years sober) that if I don't get God, I'll get drunk - from people who are still riding the pink cloud. If one looks hard enough, one can find rational people and groups in AA; one day, they may even be listed with the other groups (as we generally were until just a few years ago). I'm going to put on my optimist hat in the meantime and read the big push-back as the death throes of something whose time has passed.
As another poster mentioned, addiction is about getting away from some kind of unbearable inner pain. I'll share mine, what I did to get deaden it, and how I finally healed it. I'm 31 now, have a wife, exciting job, close friends, and most of all, I'm happy. My pain comes form severe bullying; I got beaten up literally every day as a child for three years. After that, I finally got transferred to another school, but…