SC's story...Reader's Digest version

[Supercrew]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

lolab;1188631 wrote: :H I don't know as I've laughed that hard yet, while on this site!!!! So funny Windy.

I think I'll call you SC....thanks for sharing your story - it's inspiring for all of us. Someone else here imagines urine or blood for alcohol...maybe Sheri? I'll have to give that one a try.

Thanks again.

I don't normally tell people about the urine thing, but it was just a small tool that helped me in certain situations when my mouth would water.

To be honest I didn't start my journey with a long drawn out plan. I started it with, "I am not going to drink TODAY." From that I incorporated a workout program and then a walking schedule, the CBT method of remembering the time I felt worst everytime an urge cam on was just a tool I needed in the short term to fight off the mental obsession when it would come. I basically made my plan to fill my needs as I went along.

[Unwasted]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Superscrew (sorry I couldn't resist)

I read this entire post from start to finish. Thank you for writing it all out in such detail. I, like everyone else here, am touched by your story and so admire your success. I think you've made the strongest point I've seen for the fact that being addicted to alcohol is so different for us all. Thanks again for your story.

[Supercrew]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Thank you Unwasted!

I have been reading these types of forums pretty much daily for the last 15 months...aside from the couple of weeks I took off to "test" myself. And I agree alcohol problems/addiction is different for everyone who has it. Different people need different things to motivate them to change and recover. I have always been a headstrong type of person, so I knew that the "powerless" angle wouldn't work within my believe system. I used my headstrong competitive personality to my advantage and turned my recovery program as an all around self improvement program.

One thing I will say that I have seen in the successes that I have read about and encountered is there is one common theme. ACTION. For a person to beat this thing and keep it beat they have to take daily action and continue moving forward whether it be with a popular program, or one that you make up, whether it's a workout/supplement program, or a hypnosis program, or even if it's just loggin into a recovery website daily and posting. Daily positive action is necessary and if it's enjoyable for you, even better.

The problem I always encountered over the past 15 years was I always said I was TRYING to do something about my problem, but I never really did anything consistantly to beat it.

[Unwasted]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

SC, I read a lot here and see what you're saying. People who are successfully changing their lives have learned how to live differently and are saving their lives because of it. Moving away from the wasteful nothingness of an alcohol-centered life and toward a healthy way of living and the path chosen is different for everyone - but everyone finds ways to live a better life. One common thread I see that seems essential is exercise - that and healthy food. Some people bolster it with supplements, but one has to get their body back to homeostasis I think.

I'm wondering if you could comment on the hypnotherapy. That sounds pretty fascinating - don't have any experience or exposure to hypnosis. Did you go to someone weekly like a therapy session? Just curious.

Again, thanks for your sage advice, and for posting.

[Supercrew]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Unwasted;1189692 wrote: SC, I read a lot here and see what you're saying. People who are successfully changing their lives have learned how to live differently and are saving their lives because of it. Moving away from the wasteful nothingness of an alcohol-centered life and toward a healthy way of living and the path chosen is different for everyone - but everyone finds ways to live a better life. One common thread I see that seems essential is exercise - that and healthy food. Some people bolster it with supplements, but one has to get their body back to homeostasis I think.

I'm wondering if you could comment on the hypnotherapy. That sounds pretty fascinating - don't have any experience or exposure to hypnosis. Did you go to someone weekly like a therapy session? Just curious.

Again, thanks for your sage advice, and for posting.

Hi UW,

I think many people who are practicing a program on their own or who just quit because the are told by a doctor that they need to for their health find diet and exercise essential. But many of the mainstream programs do not push exercise or healthy diet because they feels it is either completely a mental problem or a spiritual problem.

As far as hypnosis, I found self-hypnosis when I was trying to work on my procrastination problem and when I was trying to moderate about 7-10 years ago. I learned through a small book that I found at a library that I could completely relax and focus my mind. This did not help me as far as moderation or procrastination at the time, but it did show me a way that I could always put myself to sleep. I practiced a scripted self-hypnosis script for about a month, and although I found it relaxing I never thought it really worked for me, but I used this method to put me to sleep over and over throughout the years when I had trouble sleeping.

I am a sales person by day, but my passion is coaching youth sports. So about 5 months ago while coaching baseball I saw a corelation between kids who are relaxed and confident and success on the playing field as opposed to kids who might have very good skills yet who were tight and unsure of themselves who did not perform as well.

I started researching methods of visualization and self-hypnosis to build confidence and to relax while competing, this research took me to a personal success coach who taught hypnosis among other things. I took an intensive one on one training course and learned how to hypnotise my players for better performance. Well as my trainer started to induce hypnosis on me I realized that he was basically using the same script that I have been using for going to sleep over the years. As I studied it more I found that hypnosis is just a term for focusing on something and blocking out everything else around you. We all are in hypnotic trances everyday when we day dream or when we talk to ourselves. One of the most common hypnotic trances that happen daily is when you are driving a route maybe to work or to your home, and you don't really pay attention to the drive because you are focused on your thoughts, or on your cell phone or the radio. Then you end up where you intended to go but you can't recall anything about the drive.

So through self-hypnosis you do things subconsciously and we can learn to change our behavioral patterns by changing our subconscious thoughts. This doesn't happen over night and does take practice. I think most of us who have drinking problems and who have tried to quit but have been unable to all hear a voice that says, "boy a beer, or a glass of wine, or a gin and tonic, sounds great right now." Then we listen to this voice and run to the bar or liquor store and obey the voice and have a drink. The secret is to make that subconscious voice believe that you don't want to drink. One method of doing this is through hypnosis by focusing on what you want. The subconsious mind does not adhere to negative suggestions very well. So if you focus on "I CAN'T drink", basically your mind hears, "I drink". So it is very important to focus on what you want in a positive frame of mind not what you don't want. If I focus on "I am sober", or "I enjoy sobriety" or "I can live my life happily sober everyday starting now", and you send this message to your subconscious over and over by basically talking to yourself in a relaxed state, your subconscious mind will quit sending you the alcohol obsessed signals that "you need a drink now".

Now although I did not use this exact method to lose my strong obsession for drinking alcohol, through abstinence and daily action towards sobriety and happiness I accomplished the same thing.

Now when I first tried self-hypnosis years ago I had one more thing working against me....I didn't really believe in "touchy feely" types of methods to change behavior, so if you can't truly believe it will work your subconscious mind isn't going to buy in to the message 100%. Now that I have done the research and seen the results for myself I am able to change all kinds of mental and physical issues from being nervous about speaking infront of people to healing certain injuries to being more motivated to get a job done on a daily basis by just focusing on what I want to occur.

I don't consider myself an expert in hypnosis, but I do know the basics and it has had a very positive impact in my life both mentally and physically. Our brains are very powerful tools, and when we use them to focus on what we want in the proper way we can accomplish anything we set out to do.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask or PM me.

Have a great day...now I am off to coach some Football!!!

[looking for peace]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

SC, great life story. I was not going to post until I got back from my trip to LV but your story is so inspirational. I had to get my tiny iPod to type. You bring up a lot of good points. You really subconsciously need to be 100 percent competed to quitting. I was going to ask the very same question Unwasted did. I am also very interested on how hypnotherapy worked for you. Also you mentioned that thinking of alcohol as urine was a CBT method. I'm not familiar with that. I currently see a therapist (as a filmily for family therapy) and he has me using CBT to address dysfunctional thoughts as they arise. I wasn't familiar with the technique you use. Could you explain a little mor about the "urine" thing and CBT. Thanks so much for sharing your story. Best of luck to you. Peace

[Supercrew]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Thanks LFP, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT is just a fancy name for changing your behavior by changing your thoughts. I might be overly simplifying the method, but I just consider it the imagination game. If I can use my imagination to make me change my thought process so I can change the way I physically feel, then I can ultimately change my ingrained behavior.

As far as the "urine" thing. I just choose the most vile smelling liquid that was basically colored the same as my drink of choice...beer. Then when ever I saw beer, (or any alcohol for that matter), I just visualized and imagined the smell of urine as strong as I possibly could. I did this to the point where I initially almost gagged. Then everytime I saw beer on TV or at a party and my mouth would start to water, I would immediately imagine myself getting super close to a glass full of warm urine and taking a huge wiff. I didn't have to do this often because after the first or second time of almost gagging myself with the thought of that odor, the thought of drinking it was no longer pleasurable. Now maybe because I have been in enough dirty mens rooms and I just can't stand that odor it created a very strong physical response for me...but it kept me from wanting to drink that beer at that moment. That was enough for me to change my behavior and now when I see alcohol I immediately think of urine...and I don't drink urine.

[Unwasted]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

SC, your description of hypnosis is absolutely riveting. Can you post the name of some books you think would be helpful? I'd love to know more. I totally believe in how you describe the way we "talk" to ourselves and the impact that can have -- and how powerful our minds are. I think science uncovers more and more about just what an amazing machine are bodies really can be.

This is a little off the subject but relates a bit in that it's about the mind (not hypnosis but fascinating stuff nonetheless). I saw a 60 Minutes program that had a group of people they called something like "superior autobiographical memory" people........I was about people who could be given a date and then recap exactly what happened in their lives that day. Here's are two links to two segments. It doesn't relate to hypnosis - just the amazing capacity of the brain:

Endless Memory, Part 1 - 60 Minutes - CBS News


Endless Memory, Part 2 - 60 Minutes - CBS News


Anyway, I just brought it up because of believing in what you're saying about the power of what we can do if we learn to think and talk to ourselves differently.

Great stuff..............THANKS again! I just love the way people can impact each other in the most unlikely ways -- life is truly sublime...............

[Supercrew]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Hi UW, thank you for the links, I have watched the program, but I want to see it again!

As far as the books I recommend. I tried to find the Self-Hypnosis book I first used, but I can't recall the name and tried to google it and didn't see anything that rang a bell. Let me do a little more research. You can also find alot of info on self-hypnosis on the web, and there is another form of subconscious training called NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming. Not all of it is pertinent to addiction, but I use many of the techniques for myself and for coaching. But as I said, let me do some research and I will try to find a couple of books that might be helpful.

[Unwasted]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

SC, I found quite a few books on Amazon that look good (highly rated by people who have read them). I don't want you to spend a lot of time on it, so don't worry -- thought you might just have some titles that you already knew. Sounds like there's a lot of good stuff out there. I'm so glad you mentioned the subject - I'm looking forward to learning more.

Have a super day.

[caper564]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Supercrew;1188564 wrote: Thanks Windy and Ktab and btw Windy...only my wife calls me "Super Screw"

ok that made my day... LMAO....

[Unwasted]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Me too Caper - thanks for entertaining and educating us SC.

[blondie]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Hi Supercrew

Great posts; I have many books about the subconscious mind and find them fascinating and (when I utilise them correctly!) they do indeed bring remarkable results. I would certainly recommend readings on this subject.

[windy]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Just wanted to add my two cents...I am finding this subject fascinating and appreciate the input from all of you.

SC -- great explanation regarding hypnosis and I loved the way you explained how you visualized urine as booze.

[Bruunhilde]

SC's story...Reader's Digest version

Congrats Super,these are all good ideas and a great testimonial. All the positive thinking, hitting bottom twice, remembering the good and teaching your subconscious - I go to a hypnotherapist and she talks to me - like a therapist, its very healing - to get at what we want to accomplish in the customized session. I bought four sessions for $75/each and she gave me a CD of each to reuse the session over and over. I also have the MWO CDs, somewhere. But the biggest of these is the action you cite, ACTION and training your mind. Thoughts become actions. Thanks for your story. Continued success to you and lots of love in your life. I need a wife like that.