There is a big drive these days to say that trauma is at the root of all addiction. I seem to be the only person out there saying this: but it isn’t. Let me explain. What proponents of the trauma / addiction model are saying is not that you cannot get addicted to a...
I’ve read a lot recently about the link between genetics and addiction. I thought it was worth doing a post clarifying the position. The starting point, I think, it that genetics cannot dictate behaviour. Behaviour is learnt, not inherited. There is no gene that can...
I deal with different aspects of cravings in both AE1 and AE2 and I thought it would be useful to put it all together in one place. A craving is a hugely misunderstood concept, people think of it as an outside occurrence, something that happens to them over which they...
Someone posted in the Facebook group recently saying she was frustrated and angry from looking at her friends on social media posting pictures of the meals and drinks they were having. She saw the falseness of it all but she wanted to be able to buy into that again....
It's not just Alcohol Explained, in fact it's not just alcohol. Whether you are trying to quit drinking, or smoking, or anything else, often a method that worked very well the first time just doesn't seem so effective the second time around. Why is this? Actually...
I, like many people, are now working from home. It's not something I've done for a few years. The place I used too work at did it on an ad hoc basis, but since being at my new place (which I've been at nearly three years now) I've not done it at all. Last week was my...
Apologies for the lack of recent blog posts. For those of you who are familiar with my posts you'll know that, for me, they are predominantly a way to explore new ideas and theories. The reason for there not being any posts for so long is that, having written Alcohol...
One of the central frustrations of the drinker is the fact that we get alcohol into our bloodstream through our stomach (we imbibe it my drinking it, it goes into our mouths and from there into our stomach where it works its way into our digestive system before...
Moderation seems to be an issue that is constantly coming up, and I get asked regularly what I think about it. I was also asked recently to do a post on why some people end up with drinking problems, where others don't. In fact the topics are interrelated because a...
This weekend is a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK. This means that most Monday to Friday workers get this Monday off. It’s essentially a slightly elongated weekend. For obvious reasons Bank Holiday Weekends tend to be times when people drink more, and I’m not just...
One of the reasons we tend to drink far too much when we fall off the wagon is because alcohol isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; we exaggerate the effects in our mind and build it up to be the elixir of life when all it really is, is a drug in a drink form. It’s the...
Something that some people struggle with is the concept that every drinker, no matter how occasional or light, suffers alcohol withdrawal. They understand the concept that the brain has its own naturally occurring drugs, hormones and chemicals, they understand that...
I have read a few articles recently saying that there is no point trying to give up an addiction until you address the underlying problems that caused that addiction to take hold in the first place; the loss of a loved one, unemployment, low self-esteem, depression...
There are a few people that keep repeating those early days of sobriety over and over again, they get the first day or two (or even three) under their belt, and then slip up again. It highlights a conflict I have over what advice to give people when they slip up. On...
I've touched before on how ambition is a natural driving force in living things. When I speak of ambition I am not restricting it to wanting to progress a career, I am talking about the desire of all living things to improve their lot in life. I think it is worth...
There is a saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It’s often used in relation to addiction. This is nonsense. The addict is not insane. The reason they do the same thing over and over again...
A little tip for getting through the myriad of Christmas functions that most people attend is to run through not drinking in your mind before you get to the event. When I was in the military we did drill. Most people, when you mention drill, think about square bashing...
The problems with drugs is that the brain seeks to compensate for whatever effect the drug is having, so when the drug eventually leaves our system the brain is then out of kilter. Imagine your brain as one of those memory foam mattresses. Flat is ok, a lump on it...
Step 1 of the 12 steps of AA is admitting you are powerless over alcohol. Admitting powerlessness is very debasing, it is a form of surrender. It is giving up. Of course that is one of the main thrusts of AA, giving up and ceding control to your higher power. In this...
This is a talk I gave at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary Alcohol Liaison Unit. You'll have to forgive the rather dreary monologue, it was better live; talking in front of a live audience is far more engaging than than sitting alone at home late in the evening after a...
This is a slightly amended response of mine to a post in the Facebook Alcohol Explained group about cravings. I thought it was worth sharing a bit more widely: Don’t forget what a ‘craving’ is. It is you, fantasising about how nice it would be to have a drink. It is a...
A contact through the Alcohol Explained Facebook Group recently posted an animation of my last blog post. I thought it was incredibly effective so we’ve worked together to create the following which details the physiological effects of drinking. Please let me know if...
Let’s look at the ways in which our lifestyle can influence our drinking. This article is primarily about the dynamics that come into play in regular, daily drinking, as opposed to binge drinking. To be clear I am not dealing with traumatic events that have been shown...
Most people can understand how drinking upsets the delicate chemical balance in their brain, leaving them feeling anxious, out of sorts, and even out and out depressed. They therefore have a reasonable expectation when they stop drinking that they will be happier....
There a general accepted platitude about alcoholism that the addict has to hit rock bottom before they can start recovery. Like most of the platitudes and accepted ‘knowledge’ about drinking and alcoholism, it is not only incorrect it is also dangerous and contributes...
So how do you redeem yourself for all the terrible things you did while you were drinking? Do you need to seek people out to apologise? Or do good deeds to make up for the bad? Or spend your life dragging around your guilt like Jacob Marley's ghost? Well here's some...
I’ve been thinking a bit recently about how and why alcohol withdrawal is so powerful. As I cover in Alcohol Explained the physical withdrawal from alcohol occurs because the brain seeks to counter the depressive effects of the alcohol by releasing its own supply of...
Someone posted in the Alcohol Explained Facebook group recently to say he was on a weeks vacation in South Carolina right on the ocean. He’s been doing this for 12 years with a group of 20 friends. Every night they sit and the beach and drink away into the early...
Two of the aspects of drinking that I have been mulling over recently is when people post pictures of themselves drinking (or even just their drinks) on social media. I’ve also been thinking about our drinking icons, our heroes and heroines (both real and fictional)...
One of the problems we encounter when stopping drinking for good is reconciling ourselves with the decision to never ever take a drink again. When we start drinking it all seems like sweetness and light. We have fun evenings out, hangovers are manageable and even the...
I was thinking recently about those first few drinks that you have after you have stopped for a while. Those times when you simply ‘give up giving up’. These are always, generally speaking, the worst drinks we will ever have. There are three specific reasons for this...
Is it odd that Alcohol Explained is such a practical and pragmatic book, and yet I will still read a book of pure fiction, maybe a horror story, with a part of me (and not a small part either) believing every single word of it. If not believing it in actuality, then...
When I talk about ambition in this article I am talking about something far more than a simple desire to take the next step up whatever career ladder we’ve found ourselves trying to climb. I am talking about a very basic motivating factor in all living creatures; the...
Someone contacted me recently to ask about setting up meetings, to give her the chance, as she put it, 'to chat with like minded people'. I think it is an excellent idea, human beings are social animals, socialising is both necessary and good for us. However because...
Self-image is a mental picture we have of ourselves. Is it very resistant to change and determines how we act and react, and how we deal with difficult and challenging situations. It is made up in part of a long lasting and stable set of memories. There are various...
Self-image is a mental picture we have of ourselves. Is it very resistant to change and determines how we act and react, and how we deal with difficult and challenging situations. It is made up in part of a long lasting and stable set of memories. There are various...
There are a few fairly nonsensical indicators when it comes to problem drinking. Things like drinking alone and experiencing memory loss. I doubt there is a serious drinker on the planet who hasn't had drinking induced memory loss to one degree or another, unless they...
Allen Carr pointed out that one of the key aspects of the survival of living creatures is the ability to differentiate between poison and food. We use smell and taste to do this. Poisons like nicotine and alcohol taste and smell bad and we have to work at them until...
There are two types of drinking at Christmas. Firstly, there is the ‘mistletoe and wine’ drinking. The good side of drinking, the Dickensian side of drinking. Good friends coming in from the cold and snow into a warm room of dark oak with a roaring fire, flagons of...
As father of two young children I am reminded, almost nightly, of the concept of being afraid of the dark. Of course it's not dark that children, or anyone else for that matter, is afraid of, it is what may be lurking within it. This is why it affects children more...
I've added a comments page to the website. Please feel free to make whatever use of it you see fit. Also a quick update on the audio version of Alcohol Explained, production is well underway and I am hoping it will be released in early December.
There was a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on 13th July 2017 that analysed the relationship between the acceptance of negative emotion and psychological health in 1,300 adults. What the study found was that people who regularly...
Someone recently contacted me saying that they have stopped drinking, but still think about being a moderate drinker. They asked me what the key was to remove every last desire for alcohol. My response (slightly reworded) is below. I thought it might be useful to...
You hear some extraordinary things in an open plan office. I’ve just overheard a holiday conversation between three of my colleagues. One of the ladies has two children, aged 18 and 20 (clearly not ‘children’ but I shall use the word because ‘issue’ or 'offspring’...
Whilst I have tried to keep Alcohol Explained as short as concise as I can, sometimes I think I have dealt with some important points too quickly, and perhaps I ought perhaps have dwelled on them a bit longer to emphasise them. In particular the there is a key part of...
Since I’ve stopped drinking I have found my appetite has changed considerably. I deal with this in Alcohol Explained in the Chapter on Drinking and Obesity so I won’t repeat it here, but suffice to say that the food I want to eat now is usually fairly healthy, whereas...
Firstly apologies for the lack of blog posts recently. I am actually on holiday at the moment, and those of you with young children will appreciate that 'holiday' does give rather the wrong impression. In fact it is one of the more hectic two weeks of the year. We're...
I was thinking recently about the alcohol withdrawal and why it is so overpowering. Everyone faces problems in their life. Some big. Some small. Some in between. We tend to have more of the smaller ones, and less of the larger ones. Smaller ones might be paying a...
Some of you may be aware but this website went down recently and I had to rebuild it (thanks again to John S for putting me on to Goole cached pages and saving me I dread to think how many hours work). While I was putting it together again I began to look at it...
Someone recently very kindly left a review on the US Amazon page for Alcohol Explained which I found particularly gratifying. Just to clarify I find every positive review intensely gratifying, as I have said more times that I care to remember I found Alcohol Explained...
You are probably expecting this article to be about the many and varied blocks people have when it comes to accepting that they have an alcohol problem; that they are alcoholic. It is not. In fact it is about the additional problems the individual encounters when they...
Several times I have been asked about putting references in Alcohol Explained to back up the text itself. Originally I didn’t put references in because I had in mind the readership could include those suffering from severe alcohol withdrawal so didn’t want to clutter...
