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Originally Posted by SamBeaven  What's the title of the Carr book you refer to? I couldn't find the title in any of your posts, is it the easy way to give up drinking, or no more hangovers? |
The book I have is
Allen Carr's Easy Way to Control Alcohol which is ISBN 0572028504. I didn't realise he'd produced more books, but I'm guessing the other book is much like this one - he has a habit of rehashing a few bits and pieces in a book and releasing it as a "new" title. He did it with smoking: my friend has "Easyway to give up smoking" and "Easyway to give up smoking permanently" which appear to be effectively the same book.
Just to cover a few things other people have mentioned:
Wanderer: last night I got to the point in this book where Carr talks about willpower. I've given up in the past using willpower, and always thought about why it felt so hard. It wasn't until last night that I realised how stupid I was being. The internal conversation goes like this:
"I shouldn't have a beer. But I want one. But I know really, I don't. But one drink can't hurt me. But if I drink, I'll fail! Really? One drink?... "
It's almost schizophrenic! Carr's point is not that it takes willpower to stop drinking, but if you think about it, your rational, sensible, sane part of the brain is quite normally saying "you don't want a drink", and you're urging yourself on with willpower to START drinking again, not give up! It sounds weird at first, and then you think about it, and it kind of makes sense: the logic is actually the other way around to the way we think it is: it actually takes a kind of willpower to drink, not to give up.
Michael Chui: I understand what you mean, and this is something this book deals with at length. I think now, the taste people enjoy is actually the stuff around the alcohol - your body adjusts to mask the taste of the alcohol itself, because it assumes you have no choice but to carry on consuming it. As you know yourself, the taste is pretty horrendous unless you've spent some time building up an appreciation, and that's nature's warning: this stuff isn't good for you, please stop. We don't listen, we carry on, nature adjusts our senses so we don't suffer. Wonderful thing, the human body.
For years, I too wouldn't drink anything but Guinness, then my stomach couldn't handle it, and it wasn't getting me drunk enough, so I 'upgraded' to stronger stuff. Eventually I was able to drink neat scotch, but stopped for a few years and drank lager instead (fiscal and health reasons stopped me then). Now I go back and try drinking neat scotch and ask myself "what the heck did I see in this that I liked so much?" because it tastes foul to me now. My body has already started to recover and my senses are restored.
Like I said, wonderful thing, the human body.
kfcallahan: I think I'll check that book out, thanks for the tip!
As for social support networks, I think I should clarify something about Carr's network. He argued once with the UK's Advertising Standards Authority about his adverts for his 'giving up smoking' books. The ASA requires all adverts for such products in the UK to carry a warning "requires willpower to give up". He argued his system didn't, but the ASA argued it was "obvious" that you need willpower - and perhaps support - to give up an addiction, and all doctors agreed.
The thing with Carr's setup though is that it changes your attitude to how you perceive the thing you're addicted to. His response was "does it take willpower to not catch a number 9 bus, when you had no intention or need of getting a number 9 bus?" to which of course the answer is "no, don't be stupid".
The trick with this is that at the end it's not willpower keeping you away, you just don't see the point. You think "why on earth would I
want a drink/cigarette, right now?" and you enjoy not having one.
In such a scenario, you can probably imagine that in the same way you don't need a support network to not catch a bus, you don't need one to give up smoking or alcohol. It's hard to explain, and most people are understandably skeptical.
All I'd say is, give it a go and if you find yourself needing a social support network afterwards, give it a whirl. For my money, it's just another way of saying "you're flawed, this is your fault" rather than saying "this stuff is poison", but if it helps you where other systems fail, that's got to be a good thing.
Thank you all for your interesting comments - really interesting stuff in here!