The Easy Way to Control Alcohol (Allen Carr's Easyway)

by Allen Carr

He doesn’t realize that alcohol is the villain. On the contrary, he now believes it’s his only friend. The more poison he drinks, the more it knocks him down, so the greater his need for another drink.

You’ll soon be amazed by the amount of courage and confidence that you actually possess.

It is an illusion that alcohol gives courage. It does however remove inhibitions. The illusion in this case is that the removal of inhibitions is advantageous.

Just like fear, our inhibitions are there to protect us. In a way our inhibitions are a form of fear. Not necessarily a fear of physical danger, but a fear of looking silly or being seen in an unfavourable light, in other words a shyness or lack of confidence.

Why do we do that to children? If you suffer from shyness, the very last thing you need is to be forcibly made the centre of attention. Does that cure their shyness? Of course not. All it does is to convince the youngster that what is in fact a perfectly natural feeling is a serious and debilitating

fault, which in turn makes them feel inferior.

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.

So what’s wrong with taking a couple of drinks to help remove your inhibitions? Because it does just that.

But if two youths have been drinking, they lose their fear of being injured. They also lose their inhibitions, including their inhibitions about hurting and being hurt.

I was one of those idiots who actually boasted that he was a better driver if he had had a couple of drinks. I regard myself as a reasonably intelligent man. How could I have been so stupid? Probably because I had been drinking when I made the boast.

It was because it removed my fear of injury, which in turn enabled me to drive faster than I normally would, without any feeling of apprehension.

In other words, the alcohol lulled me into a false sense of security when driving. Did that make me a better driver? On the contrary.

You become insensible to the fact that alcohol has not only diminished your faculties but your responsibilities.

suddenly erupt into violence: someone has said or done something offensive that they wouldn’t dream of had they not been under the influence.

Alcohol inebriates you: if you are progressively losing control of all of your faculties, how will you be able to judge the point beyond which you musn’t go? But even if that were possible there’s still a flaw in the argument. Normally inhibited people don’t become more interesting when they are inebriated; on the contrary they become over-emotional, repetitive, incoherent and boring. It wouldn’t be so bad if the inhibited person felt better for it, but they don’t; they are in a stupor and you cannot appreciate a situation unless you have your senses to appreciate it

with.

Just observe two normally inhibited people who are both inebriated and having one of those ‘interesting’ conversations when you yourself are sober. You’ll find out exactly how interesting they are. You’ll also know just how ‘interesting’ you become when inebriated.

On the contrary, it was so obvious that it was just the drink talking, that all I did was to make a mental note not to get stuck next to him the following year.

But I can well remember feeling ashamed and guilty the next day. Just look back on your life. Is anyone ever fooled or impressed by a drunk?

An unaccompanied girl on her way home from a nightclub is meant to be somewhat fearful. If she is drunk, this natural fear is removed and she lays herself open to all sorts of dangers.

We are brought up to believe that a perfectly natural fearful reaction is some form of deficiency or weakness in our physical or mental make-up, when in reality our nerves are just another facet of our incredible machines, designed to help us survive.

the only reason that these concerns appeared to be greater to them was because they were regularly administering a powerful poison to their own bodies, a poison that was debilitating their health and energy and destroying their courage and confidence.

We tend to confuse stress and responsibility. And we tend to think of nerves as a bad thing.

Just as we are brainwashed to regard fear and pain as evils, so we tend to regard stress as an evil in itself. It isn’t. Just like fear and pain it is merely a warning sign, an indication that something is wrong.

Isn’t it blatantly obvious that it would be just as stupid to remove fear, pain or stress, without removing the cause of these symptoms?

someone is distressed, the only cure is to remove the cause of the stress.

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. What do we do then? We start taking a stronger drug and continue our inevitable descent.

In the meantime, unless we have removed the original source of stress, the victim’s life is now infinitely more stressful. All drugs have physical and mental side effects, not least of which is that...

Get it clearly into your head that alcohol does not remove stress. On the contrary it is a major cause of stress.

To use alcohol to relieve physical or mental stress is about as sensible as chopping off your foot to remove a painful corn.

We talk about something relaxing us, finding certain situations or activities relaxing. But if you are already completely relaxed, how could a drink, or anything else for that matter, relax you? In order for anything to relax you, you must first be unrelaxed.

In each case we are either removing an aggravation or distracting our minds from one.

none of these activities is intrinsically relaxing. They are only relaxing if they remove an aggravation, and it is equally obvious that the remedy must be related directly to the particular aggravation.

So how can a drink containing alcohol relax you, given that it doesn’t remove the source of the aggravation that caused you to feel unrelaxed in the first place?

The beautiful truth is that it can’t. It won’t even cure your thirst.

alcohol deadens all your senses. It doesn’t remove any of the above aggravations, it merely makes you oblivious to them.

Inebriation is temporary and partial oblivion, the degree depending on the level of inebriation. Doesn’t it follow that people who need to inebriate themselves are unhappy?

And if alcohol solved the problem and actually made them happy, they wouldn’t need to inebriate themselves repeatedly.

I would suggest that a more realistic definition of addiction is: ‘Doing something repeatedly, which you wish you didn’t do at all but can’t stop doing, or that you wish you did less, but cannot.’

Our definition of an addict is the complete opposite. He wishes he could quit or cut down, but is compelled to drink more.

Can you ever remember thinking: “I really envy these people who can smoke a whole pack and drink ten pints in an evening”? Isn’t it always the other way around? Isn’t it the heavy smokers and drinkers who envy the people who only need to smoke and drink on social occasions?

That’s because it wasn’t remotely conceivable that I would go on a holiday where I couldn’t smoke and drink. It’s quite obvious that I was already dependent upon both poisons long before I reached the stage of regarding myself as addicted. You might argue: why should I deprive myself of the pleasure of drinking or smokingon holiday? If so you’ve missed the point: that is the answer that every ‘user’ gives to show that he is in control.

Like habit, addiction is just a word, it doesn’t explain why they do it.

1. We are brainwashed to believe that we are incomplete, that we possess an inherent void. 2. We are brainwashed to believe that we will receive some pleasure and/or crutch from the poison, that will help to fill that void.

3. The initial doses taste foul and provide no pleasure or crutch whatsoever, real or illusory. This removes any fear that we might become addicted. After all, why would we want to continue taking something that tastes foul and does nothing for us? However, in the case of drugs like alcohol and caffeine, the foul taste is often partially or completely obliterated by mixers or sweet-tasting additives. We sugar the pill.

4. When the drug leaves our body we suffer withdrawal: an almost imperceptible, empty, insecure feeling, very similar to a hunger for food. Because we cannot separate it from hunger or other causes of distress, and because we do not suffer it whilst we are actually t...

5. If you take another dose of the drug during the withdrawal period you will partially relieve that part of your distress which was caused by withdrawal. You will actually feel more confident and more relaxed than you did a moment before. That is not an illusion. But because you receive that actual pleasure or crutch whilst you are taking the drug, your brain is fooled into bel...

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.

6. As the accumulative effects of the drug drag you down both physically and mentally, so the feeling of dependence becomes greater and greater, and your intake increases accordingly: an endless downwards spiral.