Sometimes people seek help for their drinking problem because someone else has told them to. If I see someone in my clinic and they tell me the reason they have come for help is because they have been sent by someone else, I know immediately that the odds are stacked high against this person giving up drinking successfully.There are two reasons for this; the first reason is related to Question Eight ('healthy selfishness') and the second reason is related to Question Four (Do the gains of giving up for you outweigh the losses of giving up drinking?).
Giving up drinking and staying dry is such a hard task, that however much you would like to do it for someone else's benefit, you probably won't achieve it. May be you think I'm cynical, but my observation of most people is that they are much more likely to achieve something if they are doing it for themselves, rather than for someone else.
I mean, do you really go to work to make your boss richer? No, you go there so that you get paid. Would you rather go out for the evening to do something that you enjoy doing, or go out for the evening to do something your partner or friends enjoy doing?
Now I'm sure there are some exceptions to this, and if you are desperate to give up drinking just because your partner wants you to, then good on you. Having said this, even if you are truly motivated to give up drinking for someone else's benefit, there's a second problem here. Under Question Four I talked about weighing up the pros and cons of giving up drinking. If the only reason you want to give up drinking is that you would like to do it for someone else who has asked you to, then there's going to be a large imbalance in your list in favour of keeping drinking. This is a bad sign, and really means that when it comes down to it, beneath it all you have some doubts about whether you really do want to give up. If this is the case you stand a high chance of relapsing to heavy alcohol use in due course.
There will be many people who list one of their reasons for giving up drinking as improving their relationships, and that's great. The problem arises if this is your only reason for giving up. Equally, it's fine to take advice from others that you really should give up drinking; BUT, the actual decision to do something about it really should be yours and not someone else's.
Next page .. Chapter Three - Question Ten
How To Enjoy Life Without Alcohol index
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