[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] welcome back to what you will learn my name is Adam Ashton and my name is Adam Jones today we are reviewing the easy way to control your alcohol by Allen Carr twelve months ago we did the easy way to stop smoking and we thought you know being the first book episode of 2019 bit of a New Year's resolution if anyone wants to control their alcohol this is definitely the book that will help you get there he's done it again so for those who haven't listened to the other episodes smoking I used to be a pack-a-day smoker and I thought it was impossible to quit smoking you know it's it's marketed to be such a hard challenge I read this book not only did I quit I quit it with considerable ease and I actually enjoyed the whole process so it's an absolute magician at helping you control drugs whatever that may be so that was all get smoking now this is all about booze which is much more common he says 90% of the population drink so if you're a little bit worried about what you're about to hear have an open mind listen to the whole episode it's a different viewpoint on how to look at alcohol in general yeah for me I thought you know I didn't smoke I didn't know no one in my immediate family smoked so the for me reading the smoking book twelve months ago was more just for interest and you know potentially smoking listeners out there I really enjoyed his approaches like is tactics for getting someone to that point to within 200 pages make someone quit smoking which sounds so tough so for you know control yoke whole I thought you know I'm not an alcoholic I don't really know anyone with an alcohol problem so again I'll just I'll read it for the sense of reading it working out how he's doing it and you know it's a bit of a New Year's traditional doing Nolan Carr book and but mate it's a bloody group here we go it's gonna be a very long episode he's not going to say hardly anything about the bad things about alcohol thing that's what you expect when you say a book like this what we're gonna do is sell you on the idea of being sober and this is what he does and then naturally you actually want to drink less and that's the way to control it so that's what we're gonna do in this episode and our buckle in yeah he says it a lot of other ways that try to help you quit or reduce alcohol like say Alcoholics Anonymous their thing is that look you're an alcoholic for life and it's a terrible disease and there's absolutely no known medical cure for it if you're an alcoholic you right now Haleh can you can't cure it yeah that's the stereotypical viewpoint of alcohol controlling it or being an alcoholic that it's bloody bloody hard to stop because there's so many benefits to it but he's saying imagine if there was a complete easy inexpensive cure that would work for anybody with a drinking problem no matter how bad it was that was immediate permanent didn't require any willpower enable you to enjoy social occasions more and less you better be equipped to handle stress involve no feelings of sacrifice or deprivation or no need to resist temptation sounds great and if you're listening you think yeah yeah yeah correct but he talks about like being in a prison if you're locked in a prison it's easy to get out if you know the combination to that lock and he's saying that we're trapped in this alcohol prison alcohol has trapped us in this prison and this book is going to be the combination to easily and simply unlock that combination lock and set free from that prison so the rules are as you're reading this book or if you're listening this podcast follow the instructions anyone who listens to this can find incredibly easy to solve their drinking problem and even find it enjoyable number two don't jump the gun number three is you don't quit or cut down until you finish the book so you keep on boozing up and number four stay in a happy frame of mind so the worst thing that can happen is that you don't succeed so if you go out and buy this book or you listen this episode if nothing happens who gives a you're back to where you started and keep an open mind and this is the big one yeah this is what he says look this is the most difficult instruction of all is to keep an open mind hey perhaps though if you like you know if you like us you might be very lucky in this respect it's pretty amazing how you listening and us talking and alan carr writing where you know we're scrupulously fair we always judge matters on their merits we never jump to conclusions and wouldn't dream of passing judgment until we heard both sides of the argument so that's you listening as well but unfortunately the rest of the world they're you know they're bigoted they're prejudiced they're incapable of seeing that they're wrong and in spite of the facts sometimes I just blatantly stick to their own opinions as if a two-year-old would you need to be able to accept that the majority might be wrong and a lot of the experts might be wrong because everyone out there are drinkers and the more you know - the viewpoint and the more expert people are the more likely the more difficult it is to contradict them so having said all this you need to have an open mind as we try and remove all the brainwashing we've had since birth about alcohol yeah and the people listening to this are lucky that they are open-minded already like this is alan carr says is the toughest thing to do this is the most difficult thing but we realize that you know there's nothing to lose by controlling our alcohol and we've got so much to gain whether you're a full-blown alcoholic or you just got a slight problem nothing to lose heaps to gain so we're gonna just bring it presents a whole different side of facts and what you need to do is actually be the judge and be reasonable if these don't fit your viewpoint then just drop them you don't have to but just try and be as rational as possible saying both sides of the story here yeah Alan Koh is by no means saying and we're not saying that whatever is written in this book or whatever is said in this podcast don't just take that and do it because we tell you to is you know Alan Carr is saying look his instructions don't follow them blindly it's completely up to you be the judge to weigh up both sides of the argument so yes everyone listening please have an open mind so the next chapter he talks about are you and alcoholic and the mainstream viewpoint of alcoholism and especially with Alcoholics Anonymous and so forth they have this thought that a man who hasn't allowed alcohol in his mouth for 20 years considers himself an alcoholic so alcoholics say they're always an alcoholic like it's a genetic predisposition but at the same time a man who gets paralytic after drinking 10 pints at the pub every Saturday night and just regards it as sociable you know that is merely spending a relaxing weekend so one person never drinks an alcoholic the other person is having a relaxing weekend yeah it's it's certainly a weird way to look at it when you put it that way there's if you think of all the drinkers in the world there's a we're pretty much on a scale there's little old grandma who just has one half a glass of ginger wine on Christmas Day with a family that's at one end of the scale and the other end of the scale is crazy old uncle Ted who gets smashed at almost all occasions the morning after he needs a bit of hair dog when he gets out of bed just to wake him up and somewhere in between those two scales is everybody else who drinks so there's a lot of stuff going around about what alcoholism is but Alan Carr says it's a very simple subject that has been complicated by all the cliches fallacies allusions and misconceptions so you need to be very patient to hear all the counter brainwashing and in order to accept the truth of it alcoholism we must first dispel the misconception that you've been brainwashing his birth so you know everyone listening you're not going to consider grandma having that half a glass of ginger beer an alcoholic but at the same time at Christmastime when uncle Ted he's rolling around on the ground vomiting trying to punch on with your other uncle we all say he's an alcoholic but in between those sue is the rest of us so where do you draw the line and where are you in between these two spectrums yeah it's hard to find where that line is I definitely didn't consider myself an alcoholic by any means and Alan Carr says that there's a lot of stigma attached to that word alcoholic it's being painted in society to be a really bad thing so he says rather than that let's say it's somebody who has lost control of their alcohol so he doesn't talk about an alcoholic as much as somebody who has lost control of their alcohol hence the title of the book the easy way to control alcohol he says you should think back when did you lose control of your alcohol this is not the point when you realize you had a problem with you a drunk driving you smashed up your car or you came or you came home drunk one too many times and your wife left you there or you lost your job there massive moments where you realize that you had a problem but he's saying that before the moment you realize it was a problem you lost control and he said when was the time that you lost control of your alcohol consumption well you might think you know I will always control like your normal drinker you only drink when you choose to and no one forces you to drink now that's just another another rhetorical question they get you to think but there's another way looking at it have you ever considered the possibility that the reason you can't work out exactly that one single moment when we lost control is because we would never in control in the first place mmm bang it's a it's definitely a different approach isn't it's just one of those I'd say it's almost a rhetorical question to think rather than when you lose control if you can't think of that perhaps you were never in control in the first place exactly he says perhaps the the billions of drinkers in the world are on the same downward slide so it's all the continuum where you you might have your first drinks in the grand mal level and then it's just a continuous slide it's not like this binary zero and one you can control it's just a continuous slide so is that hard to believe so let's examine another one of nature's ingenious traps which is users as analogy for how alcohol actually brings you in hmm he says this analogy is like the pitcher plant which is like a Venus flytrap it eats insects it's like this big open plant got tall walls got an opening at the top and he said it emits this sticky nectar that it's coated with smells delicious the flies love it it stinks out the whole jungle and the fly wants to go and have a little taste of this free food that's just this sweet sticky nectar sitting on this plan and thinks I might just jump in there another little nibble yeah did a bit of necktie and then as you say man it's it's free you think when you start nibbling turns out it's not free and it turns out the hapless fly isn't the guest but the fly right now is the meal itself so it's flown on to this plant and all of a sudden gravity the supply of uneaten nectar and the direction of hairs all conspire it further and further and down the nectar plan and the further and further it goes down the harder is to jump off yeah whence he gets its sticky nectar on its legs and he goes a bit further down and he sees a half-digested fly body and thinks oh hang on that's not going to be me I'm going to get out of here tries to take off gets a bit of sticky nectar on its wings and it's sliding further and further down this picture plant until the point where you can't even get out anymore can't even get out and now obviously we're having this analogy and translating it's alcohol he says can you picture the fly first jumping on the picture plants it has a little bit of cheeky nectar as the first teenager you know the 16th birthday or whatever having a bit of UDL having a bit of vodka and coke or whatever there tickle might be and can you visualize the largo layout so the the teenager just about to throw up as the blow to fly Arthur eating all the nectar trying to take off yeah if you think you know I'm gonna okay I've just Sam my first little drink it's doesn't taste great but on I've just sampled my first drink and I think I'm gonna keep drinking it's okay everybody else is drinking and it's slipping further and further down and then at the point where realize hey I've drunk too much from about two months I'm gonna stop drinking now but by that point just as like the fly about to take off it's too late so you're trying at this point you try and cut down or you might even be at that point where you try and quit but does this help it really doesn't it's like dieting where you try and cutting it down or you're quitting it it makes the thing seem more precious and scarce like the forbidden fruit you just want it more and more and more yeah exactly it's not the way to do it so if we think of Grandma who's lucky enough she only drinks you know one glass each year at Christmas how come she hasn't slid down this this pitcher plant at all that's right me as a grandma as managed to really just jump on the nectar plan it hasn't really even slid down a single inch but for fortunate but fortunately for some of the population they remember their first alcoholic drink and realize that it actually didn't taste like nectar at all so this is where this analogy is a little bit different the first person the the teenager who jumps on the nectar plant if you think you'd be at that first drink you had Weatherby a beer or whatever it tastes like man that's no good it's disgusting it tastes disgusting so grandma remembers that and she has always just had that half a glass of ginger beer every Christmas thing just to really fit in and make everyone else a little bit more at ease of not having that extra sober presence around ya and now again back to this point of control and being in control and not being in troll when do we lose what's the point in which we lost control that alcohol but what is alan carr is saying the fly was actually never in control from the moment it had that first waft of the smell of that nectar that's the point where it lost control because once it smelt the nectar started flying over towards the nectar plant had its first full lick of the nectar it's already lost control it's well and truly gone so seeing that we're brainwashed from when we start that adults are tough and they drink alcohol and it's really good and everybody drinks it we're already brainwashed we've already caught that sniff of the nectar and we've already lost control so if you someone on this nectar plant you might be really hard to accept but you got no cause to feel guilt than the fly entice to nectar I mean it's the the way the traps design is that it's it's ingenious and you shouldn't feel guilty at all yeah that's just society and he he relates it back to say smoking and he says if you see a youngster on the street who's trying his first cigarette he's coughing and spluttering he thinks it tastes disgusting are you gonna say to that kid I'll keep working on that son you know if you keep getting there it'll start to taste better and eventually you'll have years of pleasure ahead of you if you keep smoking obviously obviously not so but why do we do that with alcohol like we think that the first beer we taste is pretty disgusting you know if we for the next couple of weeks or months we'll try a few more beers and same as wine it doesn't taste that great at first we can sort of acquire this taste we trained our self up to like this thing that tastes disgusting and that's what he says is sort of the genius of the trap is because it tastes disgusting we think we're never gonna get hooked on it it's not like it's something delicious that we like to drink we enjoy drinking the point that it tastes disgusting is actually part of the trap by thinking I'm never gonna get hooked on it so it's okay if I have some more yeah exactly now the next story talks about is imagine you The Count of Monte Cristo you've been locked up in a prison for 25 years in this dungeon and say a doctor comes along one day and says look you're not very healthy in here it's really damp it's mouldy you're not getting enough sunlight it's really inconsiderate to yourself and your own health to stay in this place and you can't even imagine the damage it's having on your family and the doctor says look if you're gonna be sensible why don't you just leave here permanently or vet or the very least cut down the amount of time that you spend in here obviously that's pretty ridiculous of course I get if I quote I'm a lot mate unlocked if you locked in the prison a doctor telling you to just get out is a ridiculous thing and that's what how we feel like we're in this alcohol fuel prison and someone comes on and says I'll just cut down or just quit altogether it sounds like a stupid advice ridiculous because obviously if we could we would but we're trapped in this prison so what the experts do is they list all the disadvantages of drinking that thinking that the person in the prison it's going to help them but makes it harder when someone lists all these disadvantages no things like the average lifespan of a heavy drinker is twenty years less than a non drinker or the average drinker spends about 200 grand Australian I mean everyone can do their own maths about what it will cost you or alcohol destroys brain cells it's a major cause of impotence and so for there's a lot of different ones and what the book the book isn't about scare tactics so it doesn't really go on with all these negatives at all because the point is when you hear these things you're probably gonna get a little bit stress and reach for a drink yeah but I think that's sort of the key point here is that saying that you know he this is cars method you know it's not just listing all these negatives because it doesn't work more information doesn't help we already probably know that if we're at this state it's not good for us and these aren't the reasons we're drinking anyway like by you telling someone over the course of a life you're going to spend two hundred thousand dollars on alcohol you're not drinking alcohol to save money so like it's a it's so contradictory that doesn't even matter or saying like you know you're gonna lose twenty years off your life span you're not drinking alcohol to extend your lifespan so it's like giving somebody a reason that isn't actually the reason that they drink it in the first place so later on in the book he's actually going to counteract the real reasons we drink not these perceive reasons so the next chapter is about acceleration and acceleration being probably how we perceive alcohol but he says don't be fooled by the name it's a powerful poison it's highly addictive we do will debilitate your immune system and impede concentration it will destroy nervous system your courage your confidence and ability to relax by the way it tastes awful and will cost you 200 grand in your lifetime and what do you get from it yet nothing yeah if someone said that hey I've got this new drug called exhilaration and sold it to in this way obviously you're not going to try because it sounds like it sounds useless yeah perhaps you might think this is an exaggeration when it comes to alcohol and when people ask what's your poison it's not a claw creation it's if you drink a small portion need alcohol you'd actually kill yourself and what I said before does it taste awful have a 20-bit of pure alcohol and see how it tastes will cost you 200 grand no perhaps just do your math yourself or is it highly addictive if you look around nine out of ten people that you know including you are dependent on alcohol meaning if you ask them to go out and spend that Saturday night sober or go to that wedding sober they can't do it they're dependent on alcohol to give them a good time and whatever social occasion it might be yeah so that's exactly why this that that is explaining alcohol perfectly but you must be thinking you know surely the vast majority of people are drinking and ninety percent of people drink so maybe they're doing it because they enjoy it to some extent but he's saying that's part of the subtleties of the the trap of how alcohol traps you in this prison you know you're on this slide down to rock bottom but it's so gradual you aren't even aware of it obviously at the very start you don't have these such big impacts of it but it's like growing old you don't really notice how old you are until you look back in the mirror or say look at a photo from ten years ago and you realize that actually there has been a big impact of all of this if Alan Carr could actually transport you to a time in the future if you chose not to drink in a few months or something you'd feel amazing you'd save all this money you'd realize social occasions with a certain way and so forth and you wouldn't you'll never really have to use this book that he's saying you have an imagination use it in this case yeah if you if you were to picture a drug addict taking heroin and you know you're not gonna think are injecting heroin looks like fun I'm gonna give that a try one day but obviously that's not how it's you know that's the very tip of the pitcher plant that one you know doing it for that first time to an outsider it looks obvious that heroin addicts it seems ridiculous but to the addicts themselves they feel like the heroin is actually giving them a genuine high so it's like much like alcohol you know to the non drinker looking at someone drinking alcohol they can see it for what it really is but to the alcoholic drinking they do think I actually really do get a lot of benefit and enjoyment out of drinking alcohol yeah so the person who's saying I do drink it because enjoys me it relaxes me it's social the non Turing who doesn't believe it hmm no they're getting all these benefits that the drink he doesn't know again yeah Livius to it yeah we'll go through them in more detail later but when he says you know it's a social thing and then the non drinker sees them after ten beers about to vomit on the floor and very inappropriately touching people it's not a social thing whatsoever absolutely man so alcohol it's been stealing your money health courage and confidence ever since you fell in the trap and if there was nothing you do about it you're better off being ignorant but fortunately there is something big you can do about it and that's what I'm gonna be getting into yeah it's also the brainwashing and you know this society build trap that when we're kids or when we're young we get brainwashed into thinking our alcohol tastes good it quenches our thirst that makes us happy it steadies our nerves it's a mature adult thing to do it gives us confidence and courage removes inhibition or relieves boredom and stress at eases pain it sounds like great things man yeah but that's all and that's what we're brainwashed into thinking when we're young which is why we have that first sip of that nectar at the top of the pitcher plant so we glamorize and emphasize all these illusory benefits which soon hold hold your breath is he's gonna knock me out of the park but we didn't choose to drink any more than we chose to speak our native tongue it's part of our heritage our culture and upbringing as we grow up booze is everywhere it's part of every barbecue Christmas function and so forth so it's just as you see everywhere and that's why we drink it yeah I don't know what it's like in other countries but I'm sure it's very similar that maybe you know Friday after work everyone goes for a knockoff drink or you know on the parties on the weekend at the barbecue everyone's having a drink it's this thing that's just ingrained as you say it's like part of our native tongue it's just part of society and what we do so Allen Carr says can you remember when you last were completely arrested after six hours late bursting with energy looking forward to another exciting day on the planet and you actually remember this happening even on a Monday morning so this is you know and the cars point of view before he escaped the drugs trap his favorite thing of the week was just lying bed on a Sunday the Sunday sleep in and feeling tired at the same time miserable thinking how the hell am I gonna face another week in tomorrow's Monday yeah obviously after a big settle in our drinking session he loved sleeping in on a Sunday morning so the best reason you should be quitting or cutting down it's not because it's killing you and all these negative things were saying before but actually you're gonna enjoy it life so much more if you quit or cut down your alcohol yeah he says that that brand in our body is this incredible machine and we possess this sophisticated early warning system it's like the you know the fuel gauge it tells you the light comes on when you're about to run out of fuel he says our bodies similar to that and that if we drink too much I realize that it's killing us and so we throw up so that it makes us stop drinking obviously it's a bad thing for us or if we drink too much we really feel it the next day it's our body telling us that this is most certainly not something we should be doing so saying that this incredible machine stops us but what can happen instead is rather than you know sleeping in and being really groggy and having this blanket of fog he says on a Sunday morning if you can rather than you know sleeping in all morning and being hungover the next day you're losing an entire day or as if you don't drink you've got an incredible day ahead of you and you've got a hell of a lot of energy absolutely man so how power how do we fall into this trap now the circumstance is going to vary with each individual but the principle is generally the same we sneak a few a few little temples at parties during childhood and then most of us dabble more seriously during that period of great upheaval and rebellious phase that happens in most teenagers lives but early childhood is generally more stressful and adolescence but when you're in early childhood you survive it without the need to resort to drugs so as we grow older for some reason we feel like this dependency to rely on alcohol to get us through certain places but if you observe children when they're a lot younger who don't need alcohol there at first shy and inhibited and half an hour later they're screaming with delight without the need of alcohol if you compare that to a party of adults they might be showing himbut at start but then they need all the booze they get drunk and then they're running around and meeting people so they're dependent on these drugs they actually go out there and socialise yeah exactly when were a kid at a ten-year-old birthday party we didn't need the alcohol to give us the confidence and the courage to go and talk to random people we just did it of our own accord and that alcohol is actually taking that from us by relying on the alcohol we can no longer do that by ourselves the other thing is you says it normally you know when we're a kid we have like sweet when I say kid like you know you when you first start drinking maybe you have the sweet wine maybe you have the you know mix your stuff with soft drink maybe drink cider you know Bacardi breezers because I love a good Cruiser but he says you know then we start to realize that this is you know they're sort of kids drinks now kids drink soft drink and mixing with soft drink is for kids and there we go more towards the beer maybe we start to go more towards a soda water maybe we go to drinking it straight so we're trying to be more adult but what we're doing is just training ourselves we're forcing ourselves to try and acclimatize this taste of this straight alcohol which actually tasted disgusting yes so whatever your story about how you started drinking it's all going in one direction I love to fly down the pitcher plant there's only one way and that's downwards down this alcohol trap so usually the only time you can actually cut down or quit is that this certain critical point where you think that alcohol is causing you a problem and then being hindrance in some way in your life but then now he has or she has two problems when you're drinking you feel guilty and miserable but when you're not drinking you feel deprived and miserable so after several attempts to cut down what your gonna try and do is use something equal he says is the willpower method which is everyone's way of trying to cut down and quit so the willpower method is the suggestion that all it takes is a little bit of willpower to abstain from alcohol if you don't want to drink it just takes a little bit of willpower not to drink but he says that's a bit of a contradiction that most people who become addicts are actually pretty strongly willed and uses the idea of like a little kid throwing a tantrum if like a little kid wants a once a loli and the parent says no the weak willed kid will give up the strong-willed kid will continue the Tantrums until he gets what he wants so he's saying that if you deprive yourself of alcohol it's actually the strong little person who's more likely to get what they want and eventually overcome that and actually get the alcohol they want so he says that by saying it's all it takes his willpower is saying that anyone who can't do it is weak willed which is wrong it ingrained since our mind that we can actually never be cured of the the problem I mean the mere fact that we use the expression I'm gonna give up mmm opposed to quit or stop implies that you're making a sacrifice for those who quit using the will power method think their sacrifice something really big and depriving themselves from all these benefits so instead of starting with a feeling of elation and excitement and challenge which is the easy way we start with a feeling of doom and gloom as we attempt to scale Everest without the benefits of rope and oxygen so when you're stopping using the willpower method you know and you're going out and I'm not drinking and you're sitting there like a goody two-shoes when you're out but a lot of people who believe they're making a sacrifice find those times extremely difficult mm-hmm and I can only imagine that if you use the willpower Matheny think all it takes a little willpower every time we get a say a cigarette or an alcohol every time you get a craving to take alcohol that all it takes is willpower not to do it that's fun exhausting man to do that for the rest of your life something you want and you're depriving yourself of so it's almost impossible to do yeah it's like a tug-of-war so you got your reasons why you want to control and or quit or whatever but the other the other side of things is the things you're sacrificing you're giving up so it's like the to the weighing scale is kind of weighing and pulling it against each other but then one day all of a sudden all on the one side of the tug-of-war or the reasons you think is sacrificing and you know you go to a party and there's all the sudden all everyone else boozing up a bit more you might think our staff numbers can have one drink it is it is Christmas or for whatever reason you might come up with yeah just that just one drink yeah eventually our resistance is exhausted and then the engine ingenuity typically typical of our species in general and of drug addicts in particular so we'll find any excuse that will enable the statue's one drink mmm exactly it's inevitable floor of the the willpower method and a quick pause and think of a a bit of a matter approach because I like not only do I like reading the book I like the trying to work out how did he do this he well he never talks about drinking alcohol he doesn't say when you go and drink alcohol he talks about take alcohol so he says when you take it okay so almost it makes it like that idea of a drug like you take a drug where is it like obviously drinking alcohol sounds good taking a drug sounds bad and the other thing he never talks about quit or you know trying to deprive yourself well but he always talks about control or stop which is two different ways of saying the same thing one with a positive connotation one with a negative so like that cool book now what about the video you know talking about this willpower method everyone's got these reasons as to why they drink and you know anyone who says I don't want to stop drinking I don't want to quit drinking I've got X Y Zed reason that I enjoy drinking we're about to knock some of those out of the park absolutely so Alan Carr says all of these things people say they're actually excuses and they're not reasons the reason the practice is so difficult to break is the schizophrenia as was saying you believe you're making a sacrifice and this won't be so bad if the 90% of the population basically everyone's boozing up but not only do they drink they sit there having their meal with a glass of red and through zhing over the quality of the wine that they're drinking someone else might be thinking on the Friday I though after they finish work they kick off the work boots and be thinking but I like to taste beer I can't stand the taste of water yeah it's one of those things that you know this excuse that it's a it's an acquired taste that you know someone who enjoys a drink of wine with their meal and I think it makes the meal better like that's not that's one of the reasons people use it but really it's an it's an excuse because if you think back to when you first had that drink and it didn't taste so good and you probably thought do I really have to drink this for the rest of my life it's actually like a warning sign it's a wine that you're drinking poison like it actually is poison and our body is telling us don't drink this and if you drink more it actually vomits and if that's not as clear a sign of you know your body trying to tell you that you're doing something it shouldn't be than that I don't know what is so that's what it's like at the very first song we drink we can all remember that but in reality obviously the alcohol itself doesn't change the taste remains the same the whole time but what really happens is the perception of the taste changes so if you think the analogy of a man working in a pig farm and is rolling around in cleaning up all day the the men will become immune to the smell to such an extent that he is no longer aware of this smell that's lingering around but if you gets home in soil clothes you'll get a good sharp reminder from the wife so even though it's something that isn't that good frame with the smell he's come acquired to the to the smell of like alcohol something that doesn't taste good your perceptions changed to morph around to wrap around actually believe that it actually tastes good yeah is actually this is what I used to pride myself on the you know that I when I first drunk red wine I didn't like it but I prided myself with my ability to you know I trained myself almost to acquire the taste to enjoy red wine or seems like drinking straight whiskey or scotch and I didn't like it but I trained myself to be able to enjoy you know $200 Johnnie Walker Blue Label bottle and I've saw that as like a bit of a badge of honor yeah I'm tough I can drink whiskey straight have a quiet and taste but it still tastes and absolutely so that's the one about tastes you know the the the wine with meal Brigade she says another big reason that or excuse for everyone drinking is the belief that alcohol gives you courage yeah you might think that you couldn't possibly go up and talk to a person of the opposite sex or the same sex whatever your preference is you couldn't possibly go up to a bar and speak to someone that you're attracted to without you know the courage that the Dutch courage that comes with taking a drink of alcohol or if you think you know we did stand-up comedy you might think a bit of Dutch courage it's such a scary thing if I just have a have a one glass beer I'm gonna feel a lot more courage I'm gonna be able to do that so when we think of the word courage we normally associate with the words or bravery or cowardice but Allen's saying before we examine alcohols effect on courage we need to look at the word fear so typically we regard fear is some kind of evil but in reality it's like a liar friend it's a fear of heights that guarantees that you know we have the necessary precautions climbing ladders or if the fear of fire that prevents us throwing petrol on a naked flame and so forth so before we examine alcohols effect on courage we need to really look at the word fear and he asked the question does alcohol reduce fear or does it give you courage perhaps alcohol allow the passenger on the plane you know the person who's scared of flights that they have that few beers and also they can jump on or the difference between sailors back in the day doing tjuta knee or mutinying against their king and uses this the the analogy of an ostrich and what an ostrich might do when it's in danger and has this feeling of fear it sticks head in the sand and it does so because it believes if it can not see the danger that's surrounding him or her then the danger it doesn't even exist which is obviously a crock so the ostrich is actually in reality really quite powerful it's got these massive legs that can run away from any kind of predator but what it does it just sticks its head in the sand and deprives itself of all these essential attributes to be able to survive so now you when you go out and drink alcohol to remove the fear you're really doing the same you negate any possibility of dealing with the source of fear and that's removing it permanently so if you're someone who goes out there to drink so they're a bit more confident confident with the opposite sex you really like an ostrich sticking your head in the ground just because you can't look at the fear that you really have any life and you've got no ability to actually deal with this skill or this necessity and you lose the ability to actually deal with this part of life or this tribulation that everyone has to deal with but no you're sticking your head in the sand yeah this is downward spiral it gets worse over time that before you started drinking you had to do things are uncomfortable and you needed courage to do those things that were uncomfortable when you start drinking you think that by drinking it gives you courage then obviously the next time you do something uncomfortable you're not going to be able to do it without drinking so the more and more you drink in order to trick yourself to think that you get encouraged out of it the less able you are next time to use genuine courage without drinking so you're really eroding any sense of courage and confidence that you had without drinking so do you see a drunk as someone you know bravely facing out to all the trials and tribulations of life you know rhetorical obviously not like he's clearly someone who cannot face life on its own terms and he's trying to block it out like block out all the problems with life by choosing booze instead of dealing with the real that comes down bang another one might be like you know I drink alcohol to have a good time and enjoy the party because it reduces my inhibitions that's another excuse people give about drinking yeah there's a lot of people out there who think the key to a big successful party is to pull out the booze early get everyone ten beers down so everyone's a little bit drunk do so all the guests remove the inhibitions and they're passed it's embarrassing stage without go around and meeting people where they're shy and inhibited at the start yeah and again like like fear inhibitions a a natural thing that part of our being as an animal they're there to prevent us from doing things that are too stupid and obviously if you've ever been to work function had too much to drink those inhibitions for stopping you from doing something stupid they're all gone and often you can do something very very stupid exactly these inhibitions are real a necessary thing that prevent us or make us worry about looking silly or being seen in unfavorable light or helps us have the check points between what's in our head and what we say and so forth so when you're at one of these parties we're on booze and up to this level the next day when you're out for coffee or brunch whatever some of them I say to you I must have had a good time last night I was so drunk I can't even remember it sounds like a good night I've said it before now but if you really think about it why the hell on earth should you remember it if you were semi-conscious and how the hell can you enjoy yourself if you're unconscious so if you're blind drunk every Saturday night of your life going around do you really think you're enjoying your life how the hell can you if you actually are unconscious for all these peak moments and when I first read the book this is one of the best things that happen to me right because I used to drink and get drunk at all the big events the weddings the big birthday parties and so forth but it's this realization that how the hell can you enjoy these peak moments of your life you're actually unconscious here not even there bang-bang if you look back on your life have you ever been impressed by someone who was blind drunk they've never said anything that was worth remembering dear actually you personally get pleasure out of being so wasted drunk that you can't remember it are you actually genuinely proud of the night you had if you can't even remember it and a drunk people good role models I'm pretty sure the answer to all those is is a big resounding no yeah man we're not going to look up they're not role models they're not people we look up to we look at them people as a little person you wouldn't even say boo mmm bang bang so that's another one man alcohol removes inhibitions so that's another another another excuse is alcohol steadies my nerves and you might think oh it's just I've had a tough day at work and I just need this one one glass of whatever your favorite drink is just to settle your nerves and relax after a a tough day exactly and and what we're doing life if we're feeling hot and sweaty what we'll do is we'll take a shower if we feel tired and unclean we might take a hot bath if your feet are aching we'll put on slippers if you're hungry and we will eat in each of these cases what we're doing is room we're removing and aggravation and or distracting our minds from ones so we're actually removing and then this is actually steadying and calming our nerves yeah that's actually true if we try to have the same thing with alcohol we think if we're nervous or stressed we have an alcohol to relax ourselves that's the same thing that we're trying to do with you know if we're sweaty we take a shower we're trying to actually remove something but he's saying that alcohol definitely does not actually relax you or calm your nerves it's just again a misconception exactly it doesn't remove any aggregation aggravations for you it actually just deadens all your senses so again giving you the misperception of actually what's actually happening and then all of a sudden when the effect of the drug has actually worn off the original aggravation that you think your deadening is still there or it's actually even worse than it was in the first place because you've got a little bit of a cheeky hangover to go with it exactly like so if you're sweaty you have a shell you're cured whereas if you're stressed because something massive happen at work and alcohol doesn't fix what happened at work and then just say probably the next day you're even less likely to solve that problem absolutely so if we look at drug addiction in general cars now got another suggested definition so his definition of drug addiction is doing something for repeatedly which you wish you didn't do at all because stop doing it or that you wish you did less but you cannot if you calcium I'm back to what he calls the learning stage now when we're trying to train ourselves to drink when we're you know a teenager and we want to become an adult so we train ourselves to drink you probably don't you know if you can only drink three you probably don't look at someone with envy who drinks 12 and if you can drink 12 you're probably not looking enviously at the person who drinks 30 you're not wishing you can drink more everybody wishes it was the other way around so if you're thinking that then yeah this is fitting into cars definition of the addiction a drug addiction that you wish you could do less but you can't or we wish you could stop but you can't stop and he compares with hobby so for us our favorite hobby is reading and now let's just compare this with alcohol although reading or whoever's listening whatever your hobby might be you might be an expensive pastime but you never really feel like you're wasting money and if you wanted to stop this hobby you wouldn't go through all this drama and withdrawals you just quit and stop doing it and also if you went on a holiday for example without your hobby you're like reading it wouldn't be much of an issue but all of a sudden when it comes to any kind of drug if you can't go on a holiday or if you can't go a Saturday night or certain occasion without it then you're most likely you're already dependent on the drug to help you in in these if you can't go on a holiday without your drug whether it be alcohol and nicotine or whatever then you're already dependent on the drug mmm he says that every drug is slightly different but there are a few factors that are common across all drug addictions firstly he says a brainwashes you to believe that yes in some way incompetent or that there's some kind of inherent void and so we're taking alcohol to fill this void within us another thing is that initially taste foul and provides us no pleasure or crutch and start but that removes the fear that you're gonna get a ticket because it tastes like at the start that's part of the trap another one is that like the accumulative effects as they wear on you the feeling of dependence comes greater and greater and you're going to actually increase your intake and that's because say you you drink the first time you drink you probably get drunk off one drink but the more you become used to it you're probably then you need three or four drinks to get drunk then you need eight or nine drinks to get drunk so the more you have this drug the more you need to take this drug to have the same sort of effects and another thing about drug addiction in general is we're believed or we are brainwashed to believe that drugs whatever the drug might be they're really difficult to quit and when you do try and quit you know through periods of deprivation pain and pleasure and what he says is the deprivation and pleasure they're real they're not actually illusory and actually caused by a bunch of things number one is immediate hangover effects from the previous binge and might be from the accumulative detrimental effects caused by a physical drinking so on your mental health finances and relationships these things are all really gradual and slow so you don't really notice them much number three is all the other genuine stresses in your life that are really building up if you didn't drink you to address or solve them but because you're drinking they're really going up and up and up and number four is this empty insecure feeling but what he calls the the little monster it's this the slight addiction that you might have physical which is much less than we actually believe and number five which is the real big one is the whole mental craving around the drug yeah so that when you have that next drink and you think that you're enjoying the drink itself really what you're doing is just relieving the end of the irritation so because we become addicted to you know in this situation I drink alcohol we've become addicted to that alcohol in that situation having the drink that makes us think we're enjoying the drink but really we're just ending the irritation of not drinking so it's pretty much like we're below normal and we drink and we go back to normal but he's saying that non-drinkers if you're not drinking you're at that normal pert point all the time so you don't need a drink to get back to normal it's like an analogy of wearing a really really tight shoe when you put on the tight shoe it gets tighter and tighter and hurts a little bit more and you go downhill in your happiness and then you take the shoe off and ah you get this big feeling of relaxation but why the hell would you wear that tight shoe in the first place that's the nature of drug addiction you're putting on this shoe and then you get this effect that brings you up and then you believe it's the actual drug that's giving you this upward pull but in reality it's the thing that the the person who's not taking the drug in the first place half feels all the time mmm and he says if you look back on your life yeah there was there's gonna be hundreds of occasions that you enjoyed whilst you were drinking so that might you might think that okay I had a good time and I was drinking it doesn't mean that drinking is bad for me but what are you saying that you actually needed that drink and he's saying that the alcohol actually became more precious after it became a problem so it's sort of like if you once alcohol becomes a problem and you need to drink more and more it becomes so precious if you can't have it you want it more so in reality we only crave drugs because we are deluded into believing they provide some kind of genuine crutch or pleasure and once you move this delusion of this crutch or pleasure or sudden the addiction is removed also another thing he talks about is the myth of the addictive personality this chapter in particular smacked me up because it's something I used to cling to saying that I've just I've got this addictive personality whether it's you know people say this for smoking drinking gambling eating social media whatever it is or for me it's like you know if I hear a song I'll get addicted to a song for like three days and I'll listen to it on loop so I just used to tell myself I had this addictive personality and you know there's this myth that there's some kind of biological difference in certain people's brains that makes them more susceptible to addiction 'he's like that but what he's saying as well is that you know we see ourselves as being strong-willed and intelligent people but we then felt trapped and we get addicted to something so there's this cognitive dissonance there so what are you saying we fill in that cognitive dissonance between being addicted but also being strong-willed he says that all we've just got this addictive personality so that's what how he's feeling this cognitive cognitive dissonance but what he says which i thought was hilarious the only people that claim to have an addictive personality are people that are addicted to something or that we're addicted to something in the past so it's very true that anyone who's addicted to something will justify by saying I've got an addictive personality and he says it's probably a bit of an incredible coincidence so the only people with addictive personalities are addicted to something exactly if you've never met someone that says they've got an addictive personality but they aren't addicted to something maybe it's a more rational explanation rather than that you've got an addictive personality but instead you've been taking some kind of highly addictive drug whether that is smoking drinking but also gambling social media overeating all very addictive things absolutely man when it comes to drug addiction and I know this from cigarettes previously we'll come up with some ridiculous rationalizations to be able to keep on taking whatever drug it might be so another reason the listening wife is sitting here and me thinking our you know I only drink to be sociable so we all regard experiences as bar fights or vomiting after a big boozy night we all agree that they are antisocial are all in the same page there so what about just a normal party or you know just going to the local pub for a couple of beers after work could anyone deny that these are sociable pastimes and this is one of the biggest one of the scariest things that people have when they try and cut down or quit us is feeling that you can have this big void in your life if you stop or cut down drinking you're not going to be able to attend these social functions where everybody's having a few beers yeah so Alan Carr's wife Joyce she didn't drink and when she went out with Alan and his friends who all drunk they all said odd joycie being antisocial because you're not drinking with us but really even though she was being accused of being antisocial she was actually being extremely social because she was choosing to be mentally present with their friends or you know she was choosing she was not choosing to be mentally absent and instead they're the ones who they think they're being social because they're all having a good time with over the drink but really they're the ones who are being inappropriate and they're the ones who are becoming more and more drunk more and more anti-social as they become more and more mentally absent yeah that's what they're choosing to do now if you go to a bar yes there'll be a lot of people drinking and laughing and joking that's because their friends not because they are drunk and that's something to really get your mind around yeah and that's another one of the excuses is the drinking makes me happy but really when you look at it it's actually alcohol is the number one cause of unhappiness in society because it leads to so many negative things later whether you lose your job or you're in a car crash or you lose your like relationship they're all big causes of unhappiness yeah so you're gonna be hard to convince a normal drinker in brackets that alcohol doesn't make them happy you might be thinking listening surely drinking in moderation makes people happy surely yeah if you think of all the the parties of people around and the weddings of people out and going out with friends on Saturday nights you're drinking and you're happy so you must think that because I'm drinking you know I'm drinking this chemical doesn't taste so good it doesn't quench my thirst so it must be making me happy and then you think well the more I drink the more happy I'm going to get but obviously we know that that's definitely not the case that when you drink more you don't get more happy so it's actually nothing to do with the alcohol it's more that they wear the wedding and we're having fun with our friends and family that's what's making us happy not the alcohol and it's another way to highlight this is say people go to a funeral and they also drink to drown Saros so obviously in that regard then drinking isn't making happy because drinking at a funeral makes you more somber and more despondent so obviously this excuse of drinking making you happy is I've been knocked out of the park yeah absolutely absolutely it's like that again that idea of drinking to drown your sorrows it's a little bit again like an ostrich analogy if you're drinking to drown your sorrows when you're at a funeral or something again it's a little bit like the ostrich sticking his head in the sand and not facing up to some of the trials and tribulations that life might be throwing at you so if you're someone who actually believes genuinely believes that drinking is making you happy you can actually conduct this experiment yourself so what you need to do you need to separate the alcohol from the occasion so it's actually the occasion making you happy at times is not the alcohol so what you need to do is pick a moment of time when you're not happy or you're not sad you're about neutral and you need to go into a room bring and arm yourself with enough for the your favorite top of the booze shut yourself in the room and eliminate all the other factors that are going to distort the experiment like TV your phone or your radio now to sit there by yourself and start drinking and as you go as you're three or four or five drinks down ask yourself am I actually increasing in happiness so you've separated the drinking from the occasion and in this experiment where you gonna find is you're probably not getting happier and you need to ask yourself am I actually happy in this situation and do you want to spend the rest of your life in this frightening fog of being drunk mm-hmm and other things that people say that we talked about you know people who say oh I really enjoy a bottle of wine with my meal and that's making me happy it's making the meal better it's making the whole experience better but unfortunately by this point if that's what we think if we think we need a glass of wine to make you a meal better it means we're at the point where we actually can't enjoy a meal as much without drinking that wine so at this point now where alcohol is like eroded this sense of enjoyment we get out of having a nice meal with friends absolutely man everyone's just got to look at the facts or or observe so if you're at a party check out your friends and assess which ones are truly happier they the the ones will blind drunk or are they the non drinkers or again if you go to a children's party where nobody's drinking gorian and see house how great social event these can be without the effect of the drug whatsoever so if you're one of those people who need this this alcohol again for any kind of social occasions to remove all your inhibitions or to block your mind from whatever aggravation worry or fear that is causing you to be unhappy relax or distress then as we were saying early man you've really embarked on a dangerous course where you're dependent on this drug to help you with these these genuine social social things that you need to deal with you know Pat perhaps you actually feel that your problem is not just that you have an inferiority complex you might have this deep insecurity that you are genuinely inferior and this is what causing you to drink if you lack confidence there is actually a reason that you lack confidence and this can actually be addressed trying to take alcohol to deal with the problem ensures that you'll and if you take alcohol to really deal with this problem it means that you're never actually gonna get to the true root of unhappiness because you keep sticking your head in the bloody sand when all these issues are popping up and if you drink in order to enjoy the social event or the bottle of wine and joy the meal you're already hooked you know not at the chronic stage be absolutely dependent on this drug to make that occasion up to the normal point where the non drinker is the whole time so now Alan Carr presents us with the chap that called quit forever or cut down and so if you think of the alcoholic there's this nightmare they're administering themselves with this poison but they also seem powerless to stop doing it and so you need to stop thinking I can never have another drink and instead replace that with thinking how wonderful it's gonna be when you can stop poisoning yourself so if you're the one who decides to cut down you're gonna spend much of your time wanting another drink and not being actually too able to have one because you're cutting down and this will make you feel really deprived and miserable and this will not only cause additional stress but they'll actually be wishing your life away just for that extra extra fix yeah if you think that like say smoking as well and drinking that so there's a lot of cost involved and there's a lot of detrimental health effects involved so he's saying that if you decide you're going to cut down so you might drink as much where you cut 75% off you actually gonna see some improvements your Health's going to improve a little bit you're gonna have less hangovers you're gonna have more money in the bank is you're gonna be buying less alcohol but what that means is that you're gonna think you're making progress but it's actually now harder to quit because those same negative things that drove you to quit in the first place unless so he's saying that by having more money and being a bit healthier from cutting down it actually makes it harder to quit oh now what about those lucky normal drinkers who just do it so easily a little bit like Grandma what are you saying since 90% of the population has fallen into this trap of alcohol he can't deny that it's normal but in no way is it lucky and he uses the analogy of quicksand if 90% of the population were in quicksand and slowly falling down and you were one of them would you envy the people who hadn't sunk as deep as you or would you envy people who didn't realize that they were sinking I mean that's what most of the populations are doing they don't realize that actually sinking in quicksand by taking this drug or realize it's taking away all these these positive things about them you might think you know it's all right in moderation you know just a little bit I'm sure that's okay you know just to be a normal lucky drink and just have a little bit they say you know it's you can't really get a little bit pregnant he's saying that the nature of this drug addiction it actually fools you into believing that you're in control you might think oh if I just have a little bit it's okay I'm in control but as you see it's really not the case he says it you know at first you drink a little bit just that one drink and then sooner rather than later you're gonna realize that just like all the other flies there in the picture plant or just like everybody else who's stuck in that quicksand you're slowly sliding down so instead you rather than you know submitting to this this obvious fate we need to realize and rejoice that we can actually free ourselves from this trap forever now those listening if you've you've loved alcohol so long it's been a big part of your life you might be getting butterflies in your stomach about what it actually might mean if you remove this from your life right so it's a big change that you're thinking of right now one of the things we're scared most so is the thought of attending social functions for example without this crush of alcohol in Alan Carr's experience what he says he's done he's tends to leave certain functions earlier and other ones he doesn't attend at all so initially this really worried him it seemed to indicate that he wasn't enjoying himself so much without drinking and going around sober but in reality it was actually the total opposite the true reason he stopped attending some of these functions was they're actually in completely boring in the first place and the only reason he could suffer them previously it was because he was blind drunk and inebriating himself into the delusion that there were actually good functions so again it just emphasizes the fact that alcohol does not make people happy it really just renders them temporarily oblivious to their sorrows and how maybe the social function might be in reality so as we've gone through so far we've talked about the brainwashing we've talked about the truth of alcohol and what it really is not what we believe it could be we're down to the final two chapters chapter 25 how to make it easy to quit and so when Carr escaped the evils of this drug addiction of alcohol you know he might have thought at the start you know the benefits are gonna be physical you know it's gonna be my health it's gonna be my wealth but there were all these actual unexpected benefits that came along with it yeah there's absolutely big ones that you never even think of and this was big for me also we're smoking you know it's the idea of self-respect or freedom you know the idea of freedom huge it's not being dominated by a son Inc once you realize that you can go to a social event without the need to drink or anything like that you've got this real sense of freedom and self-respect and on top of that it's huge courage and confidence you know when you're mentally in physical low he says mole hills become mountains but when you're in control of your mental faculties and you're sober and you're all there the mountains become mole hills so now that we've freed ourselves from all of these illusions we've destroyed all of the excuses that we were previously telling ourselves we can actually get ourselves unhooked we can cure this I guess we can take back control because we no longer have any desire so rather than that if we have that desire to just have another drink we feel like we're depriving selves we're hooked again so really what we want to be doing here is realizing that yes all these illusions we've just become disillusioned we've removed all these fake excuses and now we no longer desire to have just one drink so when you quit the willpower method which is the usual way or when you try and cut down or make the vow to never drink again you're gonna go through this indefinite period of desperation and craving hoping that one day eventually you'll get over this drug addiction and you're gonna feel Eureka I'm free of this drug addiction now easy way is the reverse you need to think about all the things that alcohol has been taking with you and take these Eureka on free moment to right now right this feeling that yeah I'm gonna be free of this drug for the rest of my life and I'm gonna get all these amazing things back into my life and you might be feeling butterflies in your stomach but that's okay you're about to achieve one of the most exhilarating feelings of your whole entire life yeah rather than the willpower method where you vow never to drink again and then you have to fight and fight and fight this indefinite period of desperation and craving and hopefully become free one day he's saying just after all that we've talked about decided to be free right now so you know the book is titled the easy way to control alcohol so you might think it's just about you know coming down and taking a little bit more control he admits now towards the end of the book that the title has been a little bit misleading it's not actually to control your alcohol but he's saying that the only way to actually control is to become completely free that's him and if you control and cut down you really think you're making a sacrifice if you quit completely you are completely free you can be free of it altogether you've got a wonderful opportunity today to decide whether you'll spend the rest of your life dominated and slave by this evil drug or to be free I'd say ash Joe let's just disclose now think anyone who's listened this fine to the episode is gonna have a real open mind mate I'm done with booze yeah I think I'm done as well man man I initially read this as I said I wanted to read it you know twelve months on from smoking will do alcohol for people who are alcoholics I thought this is not gonna apply to me but by having an open mind weighing up all these rational arguments it becomes very obvious then you know just by having a couple of drinks a week that potentially is an alcohol problem in itself it's been an extremely long episode but it kind of had to be because we had to get as many to dispel many of these myths as possible I mean there's a lot more in the book that people need to go out there and buy it for mmm yeah so alright so if you're listening right now and you want to join the brigade of non-drinking and we've gotten you over the line then the rest of this episode is gonna be the instructions if you're someone who thinks this book makes a lot of sense stop the episode but you don't want to quit stop the episode and go and buy the book itself and learn more about it he's got here the the chapter of the instructions instruction number one do not think I must never have another drink because obviously that leads that feeling of deprivation and instead think isn't this great my life is no longer dominated by this devastation well the second instruction is don't avoid thinking about the fact that you no longer drink if you're thinking Eureka I'm free every time you think hell yeah I don't I'm not my life's not dominated by this booze then you're actually going to enjoy thinking about the fact that you don't have to drink anymore number three he says there will be a few days where you get that feeling of I want to drink and look don't worry that's part of the physical craving especially at the start but that's really a tiny tiny part of it compared to the mental craving that you've already overcome by deciding not to drink step or instruction number four do not wait to become a non drinker you are one from the start is someone asks you do you want a drink you say I'm a non drinker and these are very different Alcoholics Anonymous who claim that you're an alcoholic for life number five realize that you are in control of the craving whereas before the craving was in control of you number six is do not mourn if a close friend or relative dies you have to go through this grieving process because it's genuinely a bad thing different enemy dies there is no need to mourn you can actually rejoice whenever the subject crosses your mind it can think hell yeah I'm free of this yeah so don't mourn the fact that you no longer drinking obviously it's a it's a good thing number seven do not alter your life in any way because you've quit drink so you know don't avoid pubs and restaurants or you know don't change your friendship groups who used to drink because obviously you know you might think I'm gonna be tempted to drink again but I wonder like if people try to quit they're gonna slide back because if they're completely changing their life they're removing the things that they've previously enjoyed because I think they can't do without drinking no one are they gonna get back on the drink and this is the most important point for me and out of all of these instructions and that is the best policy that you can have is go to a pub or a party immediately or a place that you previously thought was impossible to enjoy without alcohol and this is going to prove yourself that you don't have to wait in order to enjoy yourself without drinking you actually have more fun sober at some of these vents I mean just a few days ago New Year's Eve I was out at a party with a whole bunch of people against over all day everyone's just drinking my backyard and it was even better and everyone out there is gonna expect you to be miserable because you're not boozing but it's really the opposite when they say you're relaxed and happy that you're not drinking they're gonna start thinking that you're superhuman you know how the hell is this person having so much energy and fun without booze but even more importantly you will actually be feeling superhuman that you're over this drug that you can attend these occasions and just have as much or even more fun without booze amazing number eight I think there's a pretty important one resist the temptation to convert friends yeah you know it's not like you know we're in this cult now and we're trying to recruit other people into our cult it doesn't work you can't do the same effective job that Alan Carr would do if they don't want to do it they're probably not going to and they're gonna resent you for trying no we are in the car call everybody usually I can't the track number nine is do not use substitutes when you use a substitute you might go out and have cokes every time you go out what you're doing is you're subconsciously telling yourself that you're making a sacrifice there is no sacrifice being made here yeah number 10 enjoy breaking false associations so he used to associate drinking with being happy users associated ranking with having a good holiday or we used to associate drinking with having fun at a party they're all false association so enjoy that you've broken those yeah exactly and number 11 never Envy drinkers the person drinking the booze and the ones getting smashed and vomiting everywhere and so forth they're the ones being deprived of all these things we're talking about your health wealth your mental faculties and so forth you're not the one being deprived so at the end of the book he talks about this elusive moment of Revelation and who knows you listen you might have already experienced it but it's one of the most wonderful experiences in your whole life Alan says and it's a feeling that when you truly know that you're completely free of this drug sometimes it happens a few weeks after quitting sometimes it happens straightaway but usually it occurs after one of those occasions where previously you thought you can never enjoy or never have fun without alcohol but then on the way home you're driving home from this event is wedding or whatever and you realize you've had just as good or even better time without the need for alcohol and then you so you've enjoyed yourself just as much or even more plus you're getting all the benefits of being sober and not being dominated by the drug so that's a book man powerful rationale hmm and life-changing in every way I think I've really loved to hear what listeners listeners thought of this book more than anything else please send this an email podcast at what you will learn calm especially if this podcast is being one of the catalyst and actually make you stop drinking or going out to buy the book yourself you [Music]