Alcohol is the strangest drug on planet earth! It's the only substance that when you develop a problem with it, they blame you and not the drug. Smokers are not branded life long 'smokeaholics'. Do you insist that any of your friends who have successfully quit smoking may only ever refer to themselves as 'recovering smokeaholics'?
No, of course not, because society understands that nicotine is highly addictive and big tobacco companies are devious and narcissistic in their marketing. When it comes to alcohol, the rules somehow change - your inability to not get addicted to a highly addictive substance apparently means that you are broken.
For over a decade Craig Beck has been deconstructing the illusion of problem drinking and in doing so has helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world to get the happy sober version of themselves back.
The secret to his success is understanding that often alcohol use is not the problem but rather just a symptom of a bigger problem. Many drinkers are using alcohol as a Band-Aid for more profound issues. Some are using it as a sedative to keep past trauma buried. To others, it helps push away the pain of loneliness, anxiety or an unhappy relationship. Some are even using it to cope with physical pain.
The reason other solutions to problem drinking fail so often is they attempt to take away the symptom without addressing the underlying problem. If you are miserable in an unhappy relationship and somebody takes away the thing that was helping you cope, it should be easy to see that your new-found sobriety is a house built without foundations and will quickly crumble and fall.
In this special edition of Unleashed, Craig takes you through the same process he takes his Quit Drinking Bootcamp attendees through.