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private and confidential one to one help
WANT TO REDUCE YOUR DRINKING OR STOP COMPLETELY ?
Private one to one coaching and counselling will guide you to your goal.
Personalised action plans and weekly online sessions with full support. Get in touch today and take the first step on the road to a healthier, happier you.
I can help you if you are struggling with alcohol in any of the three main problem areas detailed below.
Excessive Home Drinking
Excessive Home Drinking
Drinking at home is a perfectly natural thing to do, whether it's having a glass of something after work, a drink with your meal, drinking with friends, watching sports or just chilling out. Home drinking has increased hugely in the last 20 years as pub prices have rocketed and the low cost and convenience of supermarket booze has become ever more attractive. Home drinking means you don't have to dress up, drive or get a taxi and as peoples' work and life patterns have changed, home drinking just seems, well, easier.
Excessive and problem home drinking comes about largely because of a lack of limits. There isn't a landlord to ring a bell at the end of the night and I bet the measures are always more generous in your bar. You don't get up in the morning and see how much you've spent either. The other major factor is that drinking at home often means drinking alone and the most dangerous company is no company. Whether you live on your own or the others are out or in bed, drinking alone means the shackles are off. Now no one is watching, no one is monitoring.
Your consumption increases, the negative thoughts creep in, your tolerance to alcohol goes up so that you need more and you are slowly slipping into alcohol dependence. Waking up groggy on the sofa at 2am becomes the norm. Sound familiar ?
Heavy Social And Binge Drinking
Casual drinking in a social setting is generally a harmless and common activity. We meet with friends, family or work colleagues to catch up, gossip and laugh in a relaxed atmosphere. Alcohol is a 'social lubricant' and it makes us feel less anxious and more open. We use drink to enhance positive emotional experiences or sometimes simply just to help us 'fit in'. There is no doubt though that despite the benefits social drinking has to offer, it can be a doorway to serious drinking problems.
If you're doing this four or five times a week and always seem to be the last one to leave the pub, the alarm bells are set to ring. Also whereas many of your fellow drinkers will go to bed when they get home, you may be the one that gets in and carries on drinking. This is a definite red flag. There is a thin line between heavy social and problem drinking and it can be difficult to gauge where that line is.
Binge drinking is just a compacted form of social drinking, going out far less often but cramming a week or two's consumption into one evening, day or weekend. As such it represents dangerous and risky behaviour as you will get far more drunk, have little or no control and make unwise decisions. The likelihood of ending up hurt, in an unwanted sexual situation, an argument or fight increases hugely.
Additionally our bodies cope least well with binge drinking as it can be a shock to our systems that causes greater damage, sometimes resulting in acute alcohol poisoning and even death. You may remember a storyline in Eastenders a few years back when young Billy Jackson died this way. Both heavy social drinking and regular binge drinking will adversely affect your personal and work life, degrade your relationships and erode your physical and mental health.
Drinking way too much when out in company often embarrasses your friends and family too. The wife of a former hard drinking friend used to say 'We only go anywhere twice - the second time to apologise'. Binge drinking usually means weekends turning into one big session becomes the norm. Sound familiar ?
Full Alcohol Dependence
This is the most severe and destructive form of alcohol abuse and ultimately where all drinking problems, if left unchecked, are headed. It occurs when your tolerance to alcohol has become so hardened that you require more and more of it to achieve the same 'soothing' effects that lower amounts previously gave. This is what people don't get about alcoholism. They think that alcoholics drink to get drunk. They don't - they drink to feel better. Being drunk is just part of the process. I used to need 4 or 5 pints or 2 bottles of wine just to feel 'level' where the shaking stops and the anxiety eases. Unfortunately, because I was an alcoholic I couldn't simply leave it there. I would just keep going until I passed out. Then the same again tomorrow.
With full alcohol dependence you spend the majority of your time thinking about, acquiring and consuming drink.You become indifferent to others and the constant problems and stress you cause them. Drink is your sole focus. Your self-respect evaporates. You lose interest in your appearance and everyday tasks are left neglected. You drink mainly on your own so that no one can watch you implode.
You suffer physical ailments and mental demons. You are painfully aware that these will get worse if you stop as your system now craves and demands drink. You are caught in a cycle and that cycle forms a spiral, downwards. When you're drinking vast amounts, mostly alone, all through the day including the mornings, feeling ill and anxious without a drink becomes the norm. Sound familiar ?
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