Lying Minds: An Insider's Guide to Alcoholism

Book excerpt: Lying Minds: An Insiders Guide to Alcoholism Alcoholics are not damaged, faulty or broken, and we aren't bad or weak people, we are deceived: deceived by our own minds. Most people that drink heavily in their youth will mature out of it and those that drink to relieve some distress will moderate their drinking if that distress is removed, but we do not. Our minds do not spontaneously curb excessive drinking, they do the opposite: they encourage it. Alcohol changes the way that we think, lowers our mood, and distorts our memory. Our minds compel us to drink more and we become progressively more anxious, depressed, fearful, alone and hopeless… all of which are relieved by drinking. Drinking seems to us that it brings relief from our problems whereas in fact it amplifies them, so we drink more. This is how our minds trap us into a self-reinforcing pursuit of alcohol, and that does not happen to most other people. We are not broken or faulty but we are different. All people are different in some way. Some are tall, some are short, but we also all have unseen differences within us. Some are bolder that others, some more timid, some artistic and some more analytical. But we have differences that make us susceptible to addiction, and once that susceptibility is engaged then it forms into an ever strengthening force that propels us towards our own destruction. This book explains how our minds become deceived by alcohol and how it changes our motivation, emotions, memory and thinking. If you want to understand the "why's" of alcoholism; why we have to have that first drink, why we can't stop at one, why we drink more often than we intend, why we keep drinking even though bad things happen, and why we can't drink like normal people, then this book will tell you. It explains why we can never safely drink again, and the deeper truth… that we never could in the first place.