How To Stop Drinking Alcohol On Your Own!

The majority of clients that we see in our office are able to stop drinking all on their own without having to go to like big time treatment, like 30, 60 or 90 day treatment. I'm talking about the vast majority of clients that come to our office and honestly, it's not that complicated and I'm going to tell you how to do it in this video. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your family and your life back on track. Get back out there and live the life that you want to live. I want you to know you are not powerless. You do not have to hit rock bottom. And there are many things you can do to help an addicted loved one. If you want to be back in control of your life, subscribe to this channel and I'll make sure you are always five steps ahead of addiction. And don't forget, hit the little bell if you want access to the bonus episod. Now, when it comes to quitting alcohol, the very first thing you need to think about is whether or not you need like a medical detox from the alcohol. Because believe it or not, stopping alcohol cold turkey is one of the more dangerous things to stop. So before you implement any of the other techniques that I'm about to tell you, it really is important to have a good, thorough like assessment, medical assessment for can you stop drinking? Especially if you've been drinking daily for quite a long time and you haven't gotten more than a couple of days sober in a really long time. That's when I think it's important to get one of these evaluations. Now I'll link up a video at the end of this video that talks more on how to know whether you need that medical detox or whether you can skip it. But once you have that figured out, here are the key pieces to doing this on your own without going to like big cat daddy treatment. The first thing that I want you to do is I want you to do everything you can to make drinking a non option. So let's talk about ways in order to do that. What I mean by non option, I mean make it easier on yourself. For example, one really obvious thing is take the alcohol out of your house. Now if someone else in your house drinks, I still say take the alcohol out of your house, at least for the first little while and probably eventually after you're stopped for quite some time. That's not going to bother you anymore if someone else has a drink every now and then. But. But in the beginning, I want you to remove it because you just don't need that temptation. You'll be trying to sleep in your bed at night, and you'll hear the beer bottles in the fridge talking to you in your sleep, and you're going to think you're going crazy. So just make it easier and take it out. Now, I know you can always go to the store and get more, because a lot of families say, well, they can get it if they want it. And I say, well, that's totally true, but in your own home, you should be able to kind of relax and be comfortable and not have to have your guard up all the time. So just take it out. Now, the next thing you need to do in order to take off the option of drinking alcohol is tell the really important people around you that you're not going to be drinking anymore. Because that way, if you're at a restaurant with a friend or you're hanging out at a work function and the temptation is there, if there's someone there that knows that you're not supposed to be drinking, then you're less likely to cave into that pressure. And again, it makes it easier. Now, this third way of taking alcohol off the table is probably the most effective way, and that is actually to use a Sober Link. Now, you may have heard me talk about soberlink before for two reasons. One, because they sponsor this channel, and two, because I freaking love soberlink. We have been using Sober Links in our office since way before we had a YouTube channel, way before they sponsored us. And I am a huge fan. In fact, most of the people that come see me for alcohol, and this is one of the big reasons why they're able to stop without having to go away. So you're thinking, well, what the heck is a soberlink? A soberlink is an alcohol monitoring device. It's a Breathalyzer. But not just any Breathalyzer. It's a fancy, sophisticated kind of breathalyzer, because what happens is you can set up a schedule for when you want to be tested. So, for example, for clients who come to my office, we decide on a schedule of tests. Usually they get tested about three times a day. I'm not trying to catch them, I'm trying to prevent them. So they know when the tests are coming, usually first thing in the morning, somewhere in the middle, and last thing before bed. And when they're supposed to take these tests, they actually get a text message reminder 15 minutes before they're supposed to take the test. It says, hey, you have a test at 6 o' clock or whatever time you and your support person has come up with for you to take the test. And then you usually have like an hour window after that. So I know if you're worried, like, what if I'm in a meeting, what if I can't? Like what if I'm in the middle of something? You have, they text you 15 minutes before and you have a whole hour after. So you really have like an hour and 15 minutes before you're even late. So it's completely doable. In fact, I've had a lot of really high level professionals use Soberlink and the people around them never even knew. It's about the size of your cell phone. It comes in a case that kind of looks like a fancy sunglasses case. So if you had it like sitting in your car or something or in your pocketbook, no one's really going to think a lot about it. Now let me tell you why I think this is so effective. Number one, you have these scheduled tests. Number two, it has facial recognition software in it. Kind of like your phone won't open without your face. When you first get a silver link, it takes your picture. They call that the master picture and it matches up. Make sure it's you taking it. So you can't sneak around, get someone else to take it, do something sneaky by having some kind of other air source blowing into it. None of that, just forget it. I've seen it all. It's not going to work. So it kind of makes it sort of foolproof. Now if you miss your test or you're late or you get a positive, your support person can get a text message show in the. So my clients, those messages usually come to me and sometimes even to another person like their sponsor, recovery coach or family member if they so choose. You can set up that accountability, however, works best for you. Now really, really, the reason why this is so effective is because it makes drinking a non option. It doesn't leave room for all those sneaky little thoughts like, well, my spouse is going to be gone from the house for a couple hours, I can drink just one. She'll never know. It'll be out of my system or I'm out for a business lunch meeting. You know, it's not going to hurt anything. You know, all those little sneaky thoughts, it kind of does away with it because you know you're not going to get away with it, so why do it? People that use Soberlink. It's actually a thousand times easier because you make the decision one time, which is the time when you make the decision to get on soberlink and then the decision is made. You don't have to fight for yourself a thousand times a day doing this whole back and forth thing where you feel like you're white knuckling it. It simply makes it a non option, which is why it makes it a bazillion times easier. So remember, do anything you can to make drinking alcohol a non option. Don't have it around you. Tell the people that are important to you and close to you that you're not drinking and even go to the lengths of getting a sober link. I'm telling you, without the sober link, so many of my clients would end up having to go away to treatment. They would have to take off time from work, miss school, be away from family, all that stuff. And because of that, because they've done these things that I'm telling you, they're able to do it on their own. Now, another piece to this idea of how to quit drinking alcohol all on your own is you have to stop trying to convince yourself that you can drink differently. What I mean by that, well, if you're like old school, you ever been to 12 steps or something, then what you would say here is it's not manageable, it's unmanageable. When you start drinking, it doesn't end well. So stop trying to convince yourself that you can somehow do it differently. Like you can just drink beer and not hard liquor, or you can just drink on the weekends, or you can just drink on special occasions like vacations, or you won't drink more than three or four or whatever it is. How many times have you done that already? A lot. I know you're not watching this video without having done all that already, right? You got to this point, you've tried to cut it back, you've tried to manage it, I'm certain of it. It's just not going to work. Now, I'm not telling you it will never work ever, at all. Not even one time. You, yeah, you may be able to manage it a time or two, but eventually what happens, it always gets back out of control. So you have got to rid yourself of the sneaky thought of trying to do it managerially, trying to keep it into your life, but not have all the problems. It just flat out ain't going to happen. That is the biggest reason why most people have a hard time stopping alcohol. Not because they can't stop but because they kind of like convince themselves this time will be different and it pretty much always ends the same. How many of you have tried to manage it, cut it back, do all those things? I call it bargaining. How many of you have tried that? What have you tried? Has it worked? Let me know that in the comments because maybe someone else reading those comments, you can help them avoid the pain and mistake of making the ones you've already made. Moving on our list, you have figured out whether or not you need a detox. You have taken alcohol out of the equation. It is now a non option. You have decided for sure that you are not going to convince yourself that you can just drink a little because you've tried that and it hasn't worked. Now the next thing I want you to do is I want you to change your habits. Now this one may seem kind of like simple and silly, but this one is actually super helpful. If you always stop and buy alcohol at the store on the way home from work, go a different way home from work. Don't stop at the gas station where you always stopped and got it, or the liquor store or wherever it was. If you always sit down after work, watch basketball and drink, don't come home from work and sit down and watch basketball. If there's a high risk time where you normally would drink, make sure you plan an activity for during that time. The reason is because it's become such a habit and we have all experienced this before. We don't even mean to be drinking, but we get into this sort of set routine where we're kind of like an autopilot and the next thing you know we're just back doing it not because we wanted to, but because like literally we just did it on autopilot and we completely blanked out. And then you're like, what the heck am I doing? Another way this is helpful is by changing all those little day to day habits, you actually are less likely to trigger cravings because when you do all the things you used to do that were associated with alcohol, it triggers more cravings. So then again, changing all this makes it easier. Let me tell you this story about how this has worked for a client of mine just here recently. So this client who came in, I'm say like a little bit over a year ago and he had really kind of hit the wall with his wife. I mean it was kind of like either you get it under control and you stop this mess or you're out. So he knew he had reached the point of some Decision making. By the time he came to my office, he was like, you know what? I gotta stop doing this. This is silly. I'm gonna lose my whole family. What can I do? And I talked to him about doing these exact things I'm telling you now, in his case, we determined that he probably didn't need detox because he was already like four or five days sober before he came in to see me, which told me he was kind of out of that detox window. But what he did do is he decided, okay, I will do all the other things that you're telling me to do. I'll change my routines and habits. I'll get a sober link. I'll let people around me know that I'm not going to drink anymore. And you know what? That person has not had a drink since they stepped foot in my office. They've literally just celebrated their one year and everything in their life is better. Their relationships better. Their work is better. Their relationship with their kids is better. They feel about a thousand times better. They have more energy and motivation. They're looking forward to things. They get excited about things. Their whole life is different. And the biggest reason is, is that this person was willing to make these changes. And they're not even that huge of changes. But if you're willing to do these small things, the chances that you're gonna have success go way, way up. Now, the last thing I want to tell you about how to get sober and stay sober all on your own is that I want you to stay focused on what you do want, because you're spready. And don't let your mind go into the deep, dark rabbit hole of what you can't have or what other people are doing. Let me tell you what, Alcohol is a poison. Poison. And it doesn't serve anyone well, I promise you. And if you put it in your body long enough, it's going to cause you problems. It is literally poisoning your body. So don't allow yourself to have this thought of like, why me? Or why can everybody else do this? And I can't. Instead of thinking about what you can't have, it's much more effective to think about what you want instead. You want to feel better when you wake up. You want to have a better relationship with someone in your life. You want your career to take off. Maybe you want to lose a little weight or something, but focus on what you want from this decision, not what you don't want. And not only will it make it a lot easier, but you'll feel a lot happier in the process. As always, I'm going to put links in the description for you for additional resources, including Sober Link if you want to check that out. And up next, I'm going to put this video up here for you about do you need detox or you don't need detox? Not only that, but the entire playlist focus on alcohol. I'd like to send a big heartfelt thanks to all of you who help support this channel. Your likes, shares and donations are helping us spread the message of recovery and without you, this wouldn't be possible. Now this next video has been hand selected to go right along with this one. And don't forget to check the description for additional resources.