I was turning into someone that I didn’t like — One of the troubling things about problem drinking in middle and older age is that it has a different effect on your brain. You just don’t experience the effects of alcohol in the same way that you did in your younger days. It can mess with your head in new…

This is a common condition but believe it or not, there are solid scientific reasons why it happens — There are lots of huge positives that happen when a drinker quits alcohol. Mental and physical health will generally start to improve immediately and hangovers become a thing of the past. It’s often not all sunshine and light, however, especially in the early days and weeks. One common occurrence that…

Following these three tips will hopefully make the experience easier for you and improve your chances of success — If you’ve been drinking regularly for years and then suddenly stop, it’s easy to feel lost. That was my experience when I first started taking breaks from the booze. Preparing for sobriety in advance can make it easier to maintain a sense of purpose and not get drawn back into…

Or do you desire change? — Do I really want to carry on like this? It’s a question that most people who drink too much alcohol face eventually. For those with acute issues, it can manifest as a crisis relatively early in life. …

There are additional pressures and temptations — The tragic death of Steve Harwell this week brought something home to me. Having hung out with artistic types throughout my life, it’s striking how easy it can be for creative people, such as musicians, actors, comics, and writers to develop alcohol problems. There are particular risks associated with creativity…

I couldn’t just drink, I needed to warm up and wind down too — “Drinks before dinner And wine with dinner And after-dinner drinks” — Loudon Wainwright, from the song “Wine With Dinner” There was a time when I would just go to a bar to meet friends, have a few drinks, and then go home. I remember it well. …

Boozing enlivened me when I was younger and wrecked me in later life — In my younger days, I could swig back the booze and it would act as a kind of fuel. I’d ride the waves of euphoria and, as long as I didn’t allow the alcohol to wear off, I remained energized and fine. Skip forward a few decades and the opposite…

While the level of drama involved in heavy drinking can be overspun, the risks are still real — If the only information that I received about alcohol problems came from the media then I would probably come to the conclusion that it’s all very dramatic. So many of the media stories I see are about addicted celebs battling death and divorce, interrupted only by bouts of recovery spent…

Long-term excessive alcohol use is unsustainable — One thing that I’ve learned from my boozing career is that sooner or later, virtually all drinkers who persist in consuming alcohol at excessive levels will hit some sort of crisis point. The only variables are really the nature and timing of how the crisis manifests. Even relatively functional heavy…