Alcoholism or, any addiction that is any habit you can’t stop that has clearly negative effects on your life, from a rational mind are the oddest seemingly insurmountable hill.
To the untrained eye it is baffling how someone can go out on Saturday spend all there money on drink and coke, fight their best friend, wake up outside your front door cause you lost your keys with a black eye and then by Wednesday start planning to head that new club Glow on Friday.
Why are you going out again after the shame and pain and true self inflicted grief of the previous Saturday. You promised yourself and your girlfriend you would stop. Apparently never again meant 6 days, if that.
Well the reason is you thought that there is a simple declaration and speech to be made and that’s that. Commitment to stop drinking isn’t really the game to be played here. There is a gravitational pull to thoughts whether your thinking about not doing or doing you will be invariably drawn to that thing. It is the pink elephant thing, “don’t think of a pink elephant! what do you think of?
Shame, judgment and a declaration will not do this job because those feelings will change and the discomfort of them might even push you to drink.
The answer is awareness. Open, curious and in a way non-judgmental awareness. Just begin to watch, watch yourself in every moment and see the dance, see when you’re pulled to drink. See when you never feel like drinking, just watch everything, see when you slip up and drink, see how it actually feels when lifting the glass, at no point is judgement needed.
Just start right now, in each breath, in each moment, being aware of the circus of your mind. No effort, no conclusions, no figuring it out. With a type of deep non-judgmental compassion welcome everything then wave goodbye as every thought and feeling come in and just dissolve.