The Easy Way To Control Alcohol – by Allen Carr

12 months ago, before reading The Easy Way to Control Alcohol we read and reviewed Allen Carr’s “Easy Way To Stop Smoking”. We thought, given it was the start of a new year, we’d read and review his alocohol book in case anyone out there was thinking of stopping or cutting down their alcohol consumption as a 2019 New Year’s Resolution. Of course WE didn’t have a problem with alcohol… or so we though.

Keep an open mind, weigh up the arguments rationally, then decide for yourself.

The Easy Way to Control Alcohol Summary

Alcoholics Anonymous state that  “alcohol is a fatal illness for which there is no known medical cure”. But imagine if there was a complete, easy and inexpensive cure that would work for anyone with a drinking problem, that was immediate, permanent, didn’t require willpower, enable you to enjoy social occasions more, made you better equipped to handle stress and involve no feelings of sacrifice or deprivation or need to resist temptation. We’re trapped in a prison made my alcohol, we think it’s impossible to get out, but there is a combination that unlocks the door and sets us free. Whether you are a confirmed alcoholic or just have a slight problem, you have nothing to lose and so much. Most people and established experts in the world are unanimous about their beliefs about alcohol. Easy Way won’t work if you  cannot accept the possibility that the established experts may be wrong, this acceptance is part of the mind opening process. 

  Are you an alcoholic?

  Is it peculiar that a man who hasn’t allowed alcohol in his mouth in 20 years considers himself an alcoholic, and a man who gets paralytic after drinking 10 pints is not regarded as one, but merely spending a relaxing weekend. There’s grandma who’ll have a glass of ginger wine at Christmas at one end of the scale; and then there’s uncle Ted who has a ‘hair of the dog’ moment when he gets out of bed, and continues to drink until he’s paralytic. Somewhere in between lies every drinker in the world.

  About 90% of adults drink , and why not? It’s a social pastime that helps us to relax and is one of the few genuine pleasures that help us deal with the modern life. But an alcoholic? That’s quite difference, a very serious disease similar to being a heroin addict – but with no hope of a cure.

  At Alcoholics Anonymous, they believe: “we in the fellowship believe there is no such thing as a cure for alcoholism. We can never return to normal drinking”. The implication that alcoholics are generally different to normal drinking is quite astounding when you consider it. It means you are an alcoholic without ever having drunk alcohol. Only you can decide if you have the disease!

  The Easy Way to Control Alcohol looks at it differently. Alcoholism is an extremely simple subject that has been complicated by clichés, fallacies, illusions and misconceptions. In the Easy Way to Control Your Alcohol, you need to be patient for all of his counter brainwashing. In order to accept truth of alcoholism, we must first dispel misconceptions that you’ve been brainwashed since birth. However, no one would consider Grandma to be an alcoholic, and most would agree that uncle Ted is clearly one. But what about the rest of us, somewhere we need to draw the line.

  Have you lost control of my drinking?

  When a drinker lost control, it’s blatantly obvious to his friends and relatives, but the one person who can’t see it is himself. This is common to all drug addiction. It isn’t that we can’t see it, it’s that we can’t face up to it. Although Carr detests the word alcoholic, a better definition is of a drinker who has lost control. Perhaps you feel equal stigma to ‘has lost control’… before castigating yourself, pause for a moment and try to decide when you lost control. Don’t confuse it with the moment you thought you had a problem: like the time you smashed your car or lost your job or partner because of alcohol.  Nor the time when you drank to help get over a tragedy and you deliberately drowned your sorrows. 

   Have you considered the possibility that the reason we can’t work out exactly when we lost control, is because we were never in control in the first place? Perhaps all the billions of drinkers in the world are on the same downward slide. Lets look at another one of nature’s ingenious traps to understand it a little more – the Pitcher Plant. 

  What is so unusual about the pitcher plant? Like the Venus Fly Trap, it reverses the usual process of nature, by which animals eat plants and supplements it’s diet by trapping and consuming insects. As it’s name implies, it is shaped like a pitcher and the inside of the plant is coated with a sticky nectar. The odour permeates the surrounding atmosphere and flies are drawn to it like bees to honey. The nectar tastes as good as it smells, and the flies cannot resist tucking into this delicious free meal. Unfortunately the meal isn’t free. On the contrary, the wretched fly will pay with it’s life – the hapless fly isn’t the guest, but the meal itself. Gravity, the supply of uneaten nectar and the direction of hairs all conspire to ensure that the unsuspecting insects will travel further and further into the trap. Are you beginning to smell a rat?  The poor fly is so intent on enjoying the banquet that it is completely oblivious to the fact that the slope of the plant is becoming even steeper, and it is gradually being lured into the depths of the pit. The fly can see partly digested remains of other flies, but he knows that won’t happen to him.

  Can you picture the fly alighting on the picture plant as the teenager sampling their first shandy? Can you visualise the lager lout just about to throw up, as the bloated fly tries to take off? And when the alcoholic can no longer close his eyes to the fact that his life is being dominated and ruined by drink, doesn’t he try to cut down and control intake, rather like someone who is grossly overweight attempts to cut down food?

  Cutting down doesn’t help, it just makes the booze seem more precious.  The more you cut down, the hungrier you actually get and deprived you feel. After all, only 10% don’t fall into the trap, but once you understand how ingenious it is, you will wonder how anyone managed to avoid it.  The fly was never in control! The moment it got a waft of the nectar, it was being controlled by the plant. That is the nature of the beast and it had no choice to follow the instincts. You were never in control! We defined an alcoholic as a drinker who has lost control, let’s adjust it to “A drinker who realizes that he is not in control”

  When you see a youngster experimenting with his first cigarettes, is your reaction – keep working at it son, it will provide you with years of pleasure, or is it – you poor sap, if only you could see what you’re letting yourself into? We see the youngster like a fly on the pitcher plant

  It might be hard to accept,  but you have no more cause to feel guilt than the fly enticed to nectar.