Before you go to AA or therapy, try to quit on your own with this method. It contains 12 reminders for staying sober. It has already worked for others. You will go to a place where the use of alcohol has no appeal or place in your life, so it ceases to be an issue. You will move ‘beyond sober.’
Join others who have simply quit and are glad of it: Al Pacino, Bas Rutten, Chris Weidman, Gary Oldman, Joe Namath, Robert Downey, Jr., Jada Pinkett Smith, Joe Walsh, Donald Trump, and the millionaire DJ called Avicii (Tim Bergling) quit before the age of 25.
This video is designed to be a reminder, to watch once a week or so, to keep you on track. Robin Williams went off track, for example, after he quit initially. He was not ‘beyond sober,’ but you can be: a place where alcohol is no more tempting that a bottle of bleach or any cleaning product under the sink.
Conventional treatment by alcohol-addiction counselors is marred by widespread “myths,” as exposed by a professor of psychiatry at Stanford recently who calls himself an “addiction-treatment professional” too, so he knows it from the inside. He says these myths include (1) that addiction is a “brain disease” (2) that drinkers have “no capacity for self-control” and (3) that “Among the most enduring of these myths is the idea that no one can recover from a drinking problem without our help… National research surveys have shown repeatedly that most people who resolve a drinking problem never work with a professional.” -Dr. Keith Humphreys WSJ 15 Aug 2015: C3.
So be suspect of counselors who just repeat second-hand opinions. They may mean well, but they have no real knowledge of what they say. This video was based on actual experience, by contrast, with no esteem for any of those three myths above. The touchstone for this video is the facts of actual experience.
“The Biology of Desire,” by neuroscientist Marc Lewis, was released since this video was made. He agrees that “addiction” is a bad label, since drug use is really just the normal process of “habit formation.” Just as those habits are learned, others may be learned to take their place. He gives examples of people who have beaten addictions to drugs through new habit formations and identities. The book was reviewed in WSJ 7/22/15: A13.
The words addiction and disease are misbegotten, misconceived, misleading and tossed around by mindless imitation, despite being enablers for drinkers who use them as a shield – “It’s an addiction, a disease.” Ask what function that statement has. It is designed to absolve them of all responsibility for their habit and to ask you not to blame them for continuing to drink forever. It is an excuse, a lame excuse, founded in misleading words for the facts. Don’t play their cultist, dogmatic game. Drinking is a habit that can be changed by adopting new habits.
Regarding drugs that may help you, the Betty Ford Clinic now uses naltrexone (Vivitrol) and acamprosate (Campral). Some doctors also recommend varenicline (Chantix) and disulfiram (Anatabuse). These pills have various effects on various people.
In 2011, this documentary was entered in the Sundance Film Festival, documentary division, and lost to, among other entries, “Me @ the Zoo,” the story of Chris Crocker, which later appeared on HBO.
As a DVD, this documentary was retitled “Lay off the Sauce.” Now it is back to its original working title, “Beyond Sober.” Opening photograph of a rainbow by Malene; second photograph of a rainbow by Saperaud. Thanks to both.