Dr. John A. King shares two moments when phone calls stopped him from drinking heavily and argues that people with PTSD turn to alcohol to numb pain, not from weakness. His strategy: set a strict drinking limit and stick to it, because incremental drinking spirals fast.
On 2 occasions, I remember getting a phone call that talked me off both a bottle and a barrel. I talk about it in the, in the book Deal With It. And what it is, is why people like us find comfort in alcohol is not that we're not tough enough or strong enough or don't have the capacity to handle the pain. We've done that all our lives. Is we want to try and numb the effect of our pain that we're having on others. And somehow we've convinced ourselves like things like drugs or alcohol do that. It doesn't. They don't do it at all. So here's just a simple trick going into today. Just don't do it. Don't— set yourself a limit and don't have any more than that. You know, you know what it's like? You get to 3 drinks and you think, man, I'll only have 1 drink. Well, I've had 2, I feel great. Well, man, 3rd won't do me any harm. And all of a sudden you're 6 to 10 to 12 in and you're an asshole. Just don't do it. Toughen the fuck up. You can go without a drink for a couple of days and get today done.
