Allen Carr's Easy Way to Control Alcohol

by Allen Carr

If drinkers, smokers and other drug addicts take their respective drugs because they choose to, why do they find it so difficult to abstain or cut down? If you are choosing to do something, you must, by definition, be able to choose not to do it, or to do it less often.

Alcohol never did give you courage or confidence; you only thought it did. In reality, it has been imperceptibly and systematically destroying your courage and confidence for years.

Alcohol has been systematically stealing your money, your health, your courage and your confidence ever since you fell into the trap.

The real evil is the Big Monster: the belief that we obtain some genuine benefit from drinking alcohol, the belief that we cannot enjoy social occasions or cope with stress without it, and the belief that it is impossible for some people to control it.

The obstacle that prevents us solving a drinking problem is the belief that even if we succeed, the quality of our lives must inevitably deteriorate. Ironically, the greatest gain when you do succeed will be the complete opposite!

The first is that the human mind and body are physically weak and deficient and need outside help in order to enjoy life and to cope with stress. This creates the belief that we need outside chemicals to compensate for the deficiencies. The second piece of brainwashing is that alcohol will compensate for the illusory weakness and deficiency. Ironically, it actually creates weakness and deficiencies. The third is that we have been brainwashed to believe that we are more intelligent than the intelligence that created us. That is indeed arrogance!

It is the belief that we are weak and incomplete that creates our desire for alcohol, and the illusion that alcohol compensates for that makes us feel dependent on it.

It was nice to learn that my shyness was quite normal and as a result I stopped worrying about it. It also helped me to realize that what I had always assumed to be stand-offishness by other people at social gatherings was really due to their own shyness. By concentrating on helping them to get over their shyness, I become oblivious to my own and get a great pleasure from breaking the ice. It’s rather like helping a bud blossom into a beautiful flower.

And another and another. As far as your body is concerned, the drug is an unwanted invader affecting the efficient working of all systems. So the incredible machine starts to build an immunity to it. The result is that the drug doesn’t appear to be as effective as it was, and the tendency is to take larger and more frequent doses, until it becomes completely ineffective.

In fact the most pathetic aspect of all drug addiction is that the true reason the addict continues to take the drug is to be rid of the insecure feeling that the drug has created.

What you really enjoy in an alcoholic drink is not the drink itself, but the ending of the irritation of wanting that drink. Non-drinkers enjoy that all the time.

You are cured once you see alcohol for what it is: a poison that does nothing whatsoever for anyone.

If our every natural instinct is to ensure that we survive, doesn’t it follow that life is precious and meant to be enjoyed? Alcohol is a chemical depressant and a powerful poison. It destroys us both physically and mentally. By inebriating us, it destroys every survival instinct that we possess and takes the joy of life with it. In short: it makes us feel suicidal.

Four things you can’t have too much of are time, energy, love and money.