My last entry was about the year I tried to “cure” my alcoholism through the use of a psychedelic drug commonly known as magic mushrooms. I was looking for the easy way out and I hung my hopes on treating my substance abuse with another substance. Of course, I did them by myself without the aid of a professional. I do not doubt that abstinence can be achieved through the usage of psilocybin if performed by a licensed professional. However, I didn’t go that route. Mushrooms did not “cure” me, but it did lead me to getting help for my drinking. I reached out to a hypnotherapist here in Los Angeles who specializes in alcoholism and addiction.
My hope was to get hypnotized a few times and then never have the urge to binge drink ever again. You see, I severely wanted a solution to my alcoholism as long as it was quick and easy. Like the previous 25 years of drinking, whenever I had a problem, I drank about it. I always had the solution at the snap of my fingers. However, I needed a solution to my solution and though I didn’t know it then, I was in for a life long journey that I am just now beginning. The journey to this point is a long story, but it all started with my first hypnotherapy session.
The call lasted over 3 hours and my hypnotherapist/counselor did most of the talking. He said something that really stood out to me in the first hour that I will never forget. I had told him about my inability to stop drinking and he told me that what my problem is that I have an alcoholic between my ears. He told me that I actually don’t want to drink. There is too much at stake for me to live the rest of my life binge drinking. I have an autoimmune disease and alcohol has stunted my personal growth in adulthood. However, the alcoholic in my brain is in control. This idea was a breakthrough for me. Around the time of my session I had been reading a lot about personalities types as well as the idea that everyone has multiple personalities.
Humans have evolved as social creatures. Socialization is synonymous to the human experience. We are designed as a herd or pack species and desire to fit in and to get along with others. Sure, there are a few of us who are outliers, but most people have an innate desire to blend in and belong. Therefore, we develop personalities that suit every situation. It’s a survival mechanism. We have one personality that we show our mom that is different to the personality we show our best friend. Your personalities are going to differ slightly from person to person based upon a whole host of factors.
So, when I was told about this “alcoholic” in my brain, I immediately made the connection to the multiple personality model. See, I had already begun to suspect, correctly, that I was emotionally arrested due to my alcoholism. I knew that I could not process complicated emotions well and used alcohol to numb me. Basically, I knew I drank for comfort. So, to my theory, whenever I felt sad, scared, upset, anxious, this alcoholic personality would take over. His solution? Drink. On the reverse end, whenever I felt good, I thought I needed alcohol to be able to enjoy myself. When you break it all down, this personality sounds a lot like a teenager, and for me, this makes sense.
I started drinking as a teenager and learned right away that alcohol was the solution to all of my problems. It was also the source of all of my joy. It is a common belief among alcoholics in recovery that alcohol use disorder prevents you from emotional growth. Essentially, you are the emotional age of how old you were when you started depending on alcohol to live. Since I started drinking heavily at 19 or 20, my alcoholic personality is a perpetual teenager who does not care about the future. It does not care about mental or physical health, nor does it care about anything other than drinking so it doesn’t have to feel any pain.
As soon as I could buy alcohol legally, I gave over full control to this personality. If I felt uncomfortable in any way, the alcoholic would say “let’s drink about it.” And I obliged nearly every time. So I began to write and reflect upon my personal history with alcohol.
Here is what I uncovered(in a nutshell): I felt I had no control over the world, nor my life. Life was something that happened to me and I was constantly under attack. Unless I was sick with a hangover, I felt like this most of the time. When that hangover would lift, in came that feeling of helplessness again. As soon as I told myself I wanted a drink, I was powerless to it. The thought of drinking almost always meant that I would be drinking sometime that day. Even if I could hold off that feeling for the day, I’d be drinking by the next day.
With this information, I devised a plan of attack. Whenever the urge to drink came upon me, I would immediately remind myself that I don’t want to drink. He, the alcoholic personality, wants to drink. Then, I would stop and think about what is going on inside of my head and try to understand what I am seeking is not a drink, but comfort.
Sure enough, the very next day, the urge to drink came upon me aggressively. I happened to be driving at that moment and I was at a stop light. I told myself “I don’t want to drink, he does”. Then I realized I was near a store where me and an old friend, who is now dead, used to buy alcohol. The urge to drink suddenly disappeared. I did this every time I felt like drinking. Eventually, the urge to drink would disappear for longer periods between urges until they became a rarity. I began to feel like I had a super power, and maybe I do.
This method I had devised was crucial to my early sobriety, however, it is not a form of recovery. I still have to do work to find out who I am as a sober person. Slowly, I am uncovering new things about myself. Without the aid of the “alcoholic personality” as I call it, I am not sure I would have made it through the earliest days of my abstinence from alcohol.
Of course, this would not be the end of my urges, and eventually I came very close to drinking after 90 days of sobriety, but that’s for another entry.
So, if you’re looking to get sober know that there is not just one way to do things. It is possible to recover whether you live in LA or not. If you really make the decision to quit for good then you will find a way.
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4 responses to “The Alcoholic Personality: How I Got Sober in Los Angeles”
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[…] What to do with this information? Well, for me, it was crucial to getting sober. I do not think I could have gotten to where I am at had it not been for that perfect moment during a counseling session and I was told that I had an alcoholic between my ears. I took this theory seriously since at that point, I had too much to lose. If I kept drinking then it was going to kill me slowly like it did my uncle. I decided to treat this alcoholic personality like I would a teenager living under my rules. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it. Read more about it here. […]