Top tips to stop drinking

1. You don’t need willpower to quit drinking

The willpower method, such as that advised by the ‘Drink Aware’ website, is likely to cause abject misery and failure because of the feeling of giving up something that you want and need.

Willpower is the hard way to quit drinking and not the Easyway to quit drinking.

2. Change how you think about drinking & alcohol

The willpower method suggests that you avoid temptation – with some advising that when you stop drinking you should find restaurants that don’t serve alcohol!

Wouldn’t it be easier and so much more pleasant to change the way you think about alcohol so that you can enjoy going into any restaurant, bar, club, or party without feeling left out or deprived because you’re not drinking?

3. Don’t cut down your drinking

The hard way to stop drinking alcohol is to frequently remind yourself of why you want to stop drinking. Wouldn’t it be so much more wonderful to keep reminding yourself of how happy you are to be free?

Mainstream advice recommends cutting down gradually to control your alcohol. Yet they don’t recognise that cutting down is even harder than stopping. How many times have you tried to cut down in the past and failed? It ends up as torture and misery.

4. Be cool about withdrawal

Willpower methods bang on and on about “giving up”. The key is to realise that you’re not “giving up” anything at all. You’re getting rid of something that was causing you tremendous problems.

So many other methods of quitting drinking put fear in your mind – warning of terrible “serious” physical withdrawal symptoms.

Yet when you probe further they substantiate them as being “irritability, poor concentration, feeling shaky, feeling tired, difficulty sleeping or bad dreams”.

It doesn’t sound that tough does it?

I know blokes who feel like that when their football team loses at the weekend!

5. Set the date and detox naturally

You may be worried that quitting comes with bad physical symptoms because sites such as ‘Drink Aware’ talk about trembling hands, nausea, sweating and other effects but these are extremely uncommon and in the small print these sites say that too.

Even at their worse they sound no more unpleasant that a touch of flu!

If you’re worried about what alcohol is doing to you – would you waste a single moment worrying about having the flu for a few days in return for your freedom?

Of course not, in fact – most people who stop drinking with Allen Carr’s Easyway do so without any unpleasantness at all. Even heavy drinkers

6. Enjoy Freedom

Live an alcohol-free life and be on your guard not to fall back into the trap.

If your brain ever starts playing tricks on you by thinking “Just one drink”, remember there is no such thing.

The question you need to ask yourself is not “ Shall I have a drink now” but “Do I want to become a drinker again and never be allowed to stop?”.

The answer is “No”. Why not?

“Because I didn’t like being a drinker – that is why I became free”.

That way those moments become pleasurable as you congratulate yourself that you’re free.

Of course if you’re worried about stopping drinking you should talk to your GP but first find out a little more about the best way to stop drinking – Allen Carr’s Easyway to Stop Drinking and why you really don’t have to be afraid of alcohol withdrawal.