alcohol

[pookyky]

Dan or anyone,

I listened to you Daniel on Coast to Coast last week and I was very interested in you expounding on your findings/philosophy regarding alcohol. You only briefly mentioned it. I have been having problems with alcohol and would like to find a good motivator to quit.

[Dna]

I have heard that if you work on re-enforcing mental linkages with the negative aspects of your alcohol consumption (or other bad habit) it helps to put you off. You do this by using visualisation. It may work for you? If you want me to elaborate, I will dig out the book where I found the information.

best,

Dna.

[Dna]

By way of an example:

A television personality in England used to smoke a lot. She said what helped her give up was the thought of getting lung cancer - a very deadly form of cancer. She used to enjoy the kick and satisfaction of a cigarette. The feeling of the smoke trickling into her lungs was a positive one for her. Now she began to imagine the same feeling of smoke trickling into her chest, but with the knowledged that each breath of smoke against the tissues of her lungs was an incitement to lung cancer. This association became so strong for her, that it began to get easier for her to refuse cigarettes.

She gave up successfully.

Dna.

[Steve C]

eesh! I try to never visualize myself getting sick. Not saying that the method wouldn't work, but I have a real strong aversion to directing nasty thoughts at myself.

[Dna]

Er, yes, well, it's the 'strong aversion' that's going to get you off alchohol. Isn't it.

[sire_012]

yeah, spending time visualising yourself getting cancer sounds way more troublesome than smoking to me.

[Dna]

Right

[Gift Horse]

On the same subject.
I would be very interested in knowing if anyone on this board has or knows anyone who has used Ayahausca for quitting alcohol.
I am loosing my children's father to this addiction and would appreciate any insights.
I have access to ayhausca ceremonies, and have attended myself, but for different reasons.
I would appreciate any personal accounts to tell their father about. He knows I could arrange it for him but he says he doesn't want to trade one addiction for another.
Because I have experienced it myself, I told him that I can guarantee that he will not get addicted! Its an ordeal, a journey, medicine not a soothing fun "drug".

[Gift Horse]

Anyway.
Pookyky started this thread asking Daniel to elaborate on his comments about alcohol on Coast to Coast.
I would be interested as well.
All advice would be welcome for me.
thanks.

[Axl Omega]

For me it was the useage of pot and beer together that made me into a wreck. I saw how I was becoming the same as a heroin addict and so decided it was one or the other. With pot around beer was no problem to quit hardly at all.

So just this last month I also quit smoking pot, because it was taking me down the same way also. You have to think about how it affects other people around you in what you use, and you always have to replace an old habit with a newer one - say like gardening or whatever. How inevitably a dead end it all is is what you have to learn. How it affects your ability to accomplish anything at all, and how it gives you insomnia and makes you drive erratically and always tired and angry.

So I beleive that pot is one way to quit drinking in my estimation. But you could also use "Salvita" (I think it is called) and that can be bought legally on the internet. Just remember that you chew it and don't smoke it. It is mentioned here somewhere in better detail. And don't smoke the real strong pot if you try to go that way, because that is just as bad as drinking.

Most people don't have the fortitude to only smoke a little bit at a time. So it is hard to taper off and it takes something frightening to quit altogether. Just a little bit tends to make you paranoid and so you always use more to counter that. (vicious circle) Using a pipe also is the wrong way to go, so just joints. With lots of commitment then it only takes a sniff eventually - to help quit the obsessive thinking or boredom. It is better to get stoned than to end up committing suicide, was my choice.

And I have learned also that being around other people with the same habits is the biggest problem to quitting. You have to quit the whole culture as they will always drag you back in with them. So it is often more about the need to have friends around also that is a problem - and often the main problem too. This is what keeps you constantly addicted, because you will follow them instead of just taking your own lead and just saying no - like you might prefer to. (Yeah like "Just saying No!" is always so easy)

Always follow your own mind as being a better advisor, and take the risk of losing friends over remaining just another loser forever. (and losing loved ones)

[Dna]

And I have learned also that being around other people with the same habits is the biggest problem to quitting.

Very important. I have heard this in relation to heroin addiction. Social context is v. important. Habit, and all that.

Dna.

[Gift Horse]

Thanks, axel, for your kind reply.

Has anyone used ayahausca specifically for alcohol?

[ May 29, 2006, 07:24 AM: Message edited by: Gift Horse ]

[Thom]

Hi Gift Horse,

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Have you passed any of the literature to your friend? There's a fair amount online about use of psychedelics in treatment of alcoholism. This was one of the great benefits predicted by the researchers in the 50's, I think.

Here are some articles I found through a quick search:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...mg18524881.400
http://www.eleusis.us/resource-cente.../acamethod.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ts/3243277.stm

I know a number of people, friends and family, who have become addicted to alcohol and/or heroin. I sometimes imagine I might gather them all together for ayahuasca sessions, but people have to really want to stop...and let's face it, life is shit, our society is spiritually bankrupt and opiates and alcohol ease the pain of a seemingly meaningless existence. Temporarily, of course.

[ May 29, 2006, 09:15 AM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[Gift Horse]

I really appreciate the links Thom.

This is one of the reasons I like this forum, having "met" some folks that are willing to share their wisdom.

are you still around,Pookyky?

[Isaiah Mpski]

Well here on the farm Thom,everybody is addicted to something or the other.
For most it's pot and beer.You know the MJ grows wild here and the beer is 3.2 so you have to drink quite a bit to get a buzz.
The worst habit I can see as an educated physician-aside from hospitals-is prerolled cigarette smoking.Nicotine is a poison just like the 100 or so other chemicals in modern pre-rolled cigs.Terrible habit-your teeth fall out,your arteries and veins dry out,your heart gives up,and as mentioned in Revelation you end up drowning in the Lake of fire-that is the mucous and the inability to breathe.
I really think that for those of us with Messianic intentions.at some point have to make a conscious decision to give up our vices and come down out of the clouds so to speak.
As for me,I've been addicted to probably most drugs abused by physicians and the one that was the hardest for me is MJ.Although I do enjoy some of the designer steroids and if it weren't for the fact that HGH(human growth hormone) is canceriogenic I think I would use it more often.
MJ is the only known plant that has both an amphetamine like effect and an opium like effect.In general the light chained cannibols are amphetamine like and the heavy chained oils are opium like.
It can get you one way or the other.
My favorites of course have been iv ladanum and a touch of coke.
I suppose really,at this time in my progression to soberity the only thing I am addicted to currently are my blood pressure medicines.

For those of you who really want to quit anything you really have to make sure you get an abundance of good foods and alot of vitamins,as well as exercise.I give my patients mega doses of vitamins, minerals and amino acids IV.This proceedure is called Chelation.It is how Narconon detoxifys people only they don't do it iv.

[ May 29, 2006, 04:21 PM: Message edited by: Isaiah Mpski ]

[sire_012]

MJ is the only known plant that has both an amphetamine like effect and an opium like effect

not true. try Kratom.

[willoweyes]

Pooky, Gifthorse--every one of my blood relatives was/ is an alcoholic--deeply dissatisfied, desperate, guilt-ridden unhappy people who never "brought forth that which was within them." All of these people let shame take over their lives--when I asked my grandfather why he drank he told me, "because it makes me feel good," but even a little girl could see that it didn't make him feel good. He was addicted at a fundamental level to shame itself. The alcohol was a vehicle.

All you can do for an alcoholic, is insist that they keep their day job (you need at least 40 hours a week when you're not drinking, or your liver goes quick). And love them, or kick them out and move on. Don't spend your whole precious lives torturing each other.

[Thom]

From The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

The next planet was inhabited by a tippler.

This was a very short visit, but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection. "What are you doing there?" he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles.

"I am drinking," replied the tippler, with a lugubrious air.

"Why are you drinking?" demanded the little prince.

"So that I may forget," replied the tippler. "Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him.

"Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head.

"Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.

"Ashamed of drinking!" The tippler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence.

And the little prince went away, puzzled. "The grown-ups are certainly very, very odd," he said to himself, as he continued on his journey.

[Gift Horse]

Willoweyes and Thom,

I hear you.

Thankyou for your truth.

something hit home for me.

Probably the circular pattern I have witnessed around my kids father, of which, I have participated.

I feel sad. I think I'm ready to let go of the befief that someday he might change.

[sidecross]

Before LSD-25 became illegal it was used to treat alcoholism. It was usually administered in a strong dose 400 to 500 mcg. As McKenna would say when talking on this very subject the alcoholic became face to face with ‘what a jerk they were’.

Sadly this therapy was stopped when the medicine was outlawed.

[Gift Horse]

Yes, I read this.
Apparently Cary Grant benefited from repeated lsd sessions to overcome his alcoholism.
His story is fascinating.
But, as someone said earlier, one has to Want to do it.

[Axl Omega]

Yeah, finding the motivation to quit is the biggest factor. I quit most of it in 1982 when I saw all of the rock stars appearing on TV were so drunk that they couldn't even play their own music. It made me feel like nobody in the world was in control at all anymore. Me at the time still laboring under the delusion that we had leaders amongst those people - of any large consequence in the first place.

And why I never became an alchohalic myself was all of the guilt I felt about my parents always fighting and arguing about the way my Father spent all of the family money on it. (Etc) I felt guilt about it all myself because of how my brothers always blamed me for everything concerning our family in the first place. And for long after that when anybody argued it made me feel guilty always after that. So I drank beer and stayed away from the other stuff after seeing what horse's asses most people generally would make out of themselves with the hard stuff. But couldn't quit beer ever since I had been drinking that stuff since I was three years old. (Always grabbing left overs)

And in those days at a city picnic people would give a 6 or 8 year old a beer, "As long as it was OK with their parents" And people always had a beer in their hand, even while driving. So beer was never a problem at all until pot and other things came along.

But I think that the reason that guilt won't work with helping people to quit, is because they are so easily influeced by others "who it never hurts in their lives". So the one "picked upon" by the people around him sees himself as being chosen out for no good reason, or lesset than his friends because he is the only one unusually treated. The best a guilt trip can acomplish is to make someone kill themselves, and not to quit.

People don't just come right out and tell them that they are bad company, and spilling their miserable ways into everybody else's life. They try to make it look like it is a disease or medical illness instead. (Like you are supposed to be able handle it if you have a diagnosis or prognosis) Well that is up to the problem drinker to accept or reject - and so the problem cannot be handled from that angle. They will pretend to quit at best - and then only go on doing it and just try to hide it.

And another problem with drinking, is that your threshold is so easy to cross or surpass. There is no such thing as "being able to handle it". Once you cross the threshold you are past it and that is that, if with only one small extra sip of too much of beer even. That's why I switched to other things myself, because at least you didn't lose you equlibrium and control of your reflexes while driving. You just got paranoid and so then had the opportunity of letting it wear off.

So "the drinking way to success" is just the oldest myth that survives. There is nothing that causes success with drinking outside of entertaining clients that way. And when you are at an alchohalic stage you will remain one of those things the rest of your life, just like addiction to any other substances that are beyond one to regulate. So the only cure is to attend alchohalics anonymous for as long as that takes, even if that is the rest of your life. And always remember that one drink is never just "a harmless one" especially after you have been off of it for a while. After being off of anything you have been addicted to - just makes it more potent when you do it again, and many chronic alchohalics have ended up dying by an overdose when they return to their usual former habits and levels of dosage.

Just realize that it doesn't make you "cool" to drink. Actually only the opposite of that, and what people accept as "being cool" is usually only a misdefinition of what "being cool in the face of trouble and difficulty" actually means. I have no solutions as to how to get anyone to quit, but do know that most things always end up bad for you at some juncture in the future, if not from right off of the bat.

Yeah, and LSD will help people to quit, but not that street level crap. (I'm guessing) If you just want to quit drinking and not do that by going into trying other alternative lifestyles of self abuse, then it has to be a deep commitment to love that motivates you - and not just a meaningless lust for a new lifestyle.

[ June 06, 2006, 04:31 PM: Message edited by: Axl Omega ]

[willoweyes]

Addiction emasculates this one.

On the other hand, who am I to whine about the pain of being a Hammer?

The Lord is either in control, or he isn't.

God i suck, or god, you suck. Which is it?

[K.J]

Originally posted by Gift Horse:
On the same subject.
I would be very interested in knowing if anyone on this board has or knows anyone who has used Ayahausca for quitting alcohol.

Gift Horse,

I thought you might find this link quite interesting. I applaud the work they're doing at this center and hope it spreads.