10 Steps to Quit Drinking Alcohol: #7 and #8
(Go back to step one)
7. Have a Dirty Mind: Use your mind to picture disgusting images, or recall bad memories of alcohol. For instance, when you think of a glass of beer, imagine it as really being a glass of urine, with a thousand germs floating around in it. Sounds sick, huh? Exactly. The more dirty, disgusting images (or words or feelings) of alcohol you can muster up, the more repulsed you will be. Please read: How I Stopped Drinking Alcohol.
Perhaps you are someone who is very good at remembering how they FELT at a certain time of their life. If so, how did you feel that time when you were vomiting all night, or had the dry heaves? Pretty bad, I bet. Can you remember that, and feel that pain all over again? If you can then you should USE that pain to help you resist the urge to drink.
Your mind is an amazing powerhouse of imagination. USE IT to conjure up things that disgust you, and ATTACH those thoughts to memories of drinking. Before long the two will be joined at the hip, and you can’t think of alcohol without thinking of something repulsive. By the way, that glass of wine over there? It looks like tainted blood to me, mixed in with saliva!
Tip: Let your vivid imagination run wild.
8. See the Healthy You: Visualize your future, sans alcohol, and how successful, happy, healthy and loved you are. Your future begins at the very second you decide that alcohol will no longer dominate your day-to-day actions. The very second you make the decision to stop drinking is when you start to become healthier. Because your future is UNDETERMINED, it will be decided based on the actions you take today. Remember, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you made in the past, because the past is the past. What matters is what you are going to do TODAY to steer your life in a better direction.
Get in the habit of seeing yourself healthier and happier from this day forward, and keep focusing on that as often as you can. Our minds are so powerful that whenever we strongly and consistently FOCUS on something – to the point where it becomes our predominant desire – we ALSO begin to adopt the conscious and subconscious thoughts, words and actions that help BRING ABOUT that which we are focusing on. (article continues below)