STOP DRINKING AND CHANGE YOUR LIFE (Paperback)

You don't need a better argument. You need a plan.

You already know the hangovers, the broken promises, the money, the mornings you swore would be different. You've probably tried reasoning your way through a craving before, and then drunk anyway. That isn't a willpower problem. A craving isn't an honest conversation. It's a demand for your attention, and it's loudest at exactly the moment your judgment is quietest.

Stop Drinking And Change Your Life is a toolkit built for that moment, and for every moment after it. Counselor and hypnotherapist Ian Bates brings together 53 practical tools from AA, SMART Recovery, Al-Anon, clinical psychology and the sober curious movement. No single tradition has a monopoly on what helps, and you shouldn't have to pick a camp before you're allowed to use any of it.

Each short chapter gives you one tool, tells you when to use it, and walks you through it step by step. They're simple enough to follow even when your head is anything but clear.

Inside, you'll find:

• Tools for the moment itself: Urge Surfing, DEADS, DISARM, HALT and Play the Tape Forward, so you can ride out a craving without obeying it
• A way to understand your triggers: the Urge Log, the ABC Model, and the question that changes everything: What job have you given alcohol?
• Help with social situations: refusals prepared before you need them, an exit plan, something to hold in your hand, and how to stand apart from a culture that expects you to drink
• Habits for long-term change: people, places and things; why feelings aren't facts; and how to live your way into better thinking
• Aftercare that's realistic: progress, not perfection, and how to stop a slip from becoming a collapse
• A section for those who love a drinker: detaching with love, the Three C's, and why your recovery doesn't wait on theirs

You don't need to have lost the job, the marriage or your health before your discomfort counts as real. If part of you has been quietly keeping score, that's enough. It was always enough.

You are not who alcohol told you that you were.