THIS IS WHAT I SENT SOMEONE ELSE A SHORT TIME AGO.
It contains info about the Allen Carr Yahoo group on the Internet.
2 days is great. it gets easier

I am at about 25 days at the moment.

There seem to be two approaches to cessation, the classic one which dates back to the 1920s and 1930s is the AA approach. Many people, myself included, have problems with the power outside oneself, and alcohol as disease model.
There is another approach, alcohol as addiction and one person who represents this mode is Stanton Peele who wrote among other books “Diseasing of America-How We Allowed Recovery Zealots and the Treatment Industry to Convince Us We Are Out of Control”
Unfortunately the two modes are often at loggerheads fighting for your soul.
Though I have found usually comfort and sincerity on the net in places like this.
I am in the same position as you in having found it strange but useful to at least start and make the statement that “ Hey I have a problem”.
I am writing from Australia, I find that I am closer to the alcohol as addiction rather than disease model. Australia is a much less religious society than the US.

8 weeks ago I gave up smoking after 40 years. I really shocked myself and it seemed quite easy at least physically, though torturous psychologically.
Two weeks ago I thought after that I can do anything, and have now been dry for those two weeks. This is much harder for me than giving up smoking. Earlier on, when I mentioned I had given up cold turkey to someone, they said “ Oh! Allen Carr”.
I didn’t know what they were talking about. However on investigation, I found there was this English accountant who 23 years ago, just stopped smoking and wrote a book about it. It is a strange method, where you keep smoking while reading the book or doing the course and people then CHOOSE to give up smoking. He has since extended his course and method to alcohol , weight loss etc.
I am a member of a group which is focused on this process http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/easyway_drinking/messages
Which you could have a look at.
This is one method of group therapy, where you can hang back and perhaps avoid the second agendas often associated with AA style groups.

I come from a heavy drinking family, and leapt into drinking at the age of fifteen, more than forty years ago. Now Iam old and I have children whose future I want to be involved in.

You seem to have a good wife and also to be not lying to yourself. Two really strong positives.
I have been reading lots around these topics for the last few months

One list I liked was the steps needed to cease an addiction.

Pre contemplation recognizing the problem
Contemplation starting to generate plans of action
Decision setting timelines
Action
Maintenance

If you follow this list, you have already come a long way.
Keep focussed , keep in touch.

This is a email I received a few weeks ago from FF which helped me through the first bit.
I had found that my situation was like her fathers. I am at the age he stopped drinking, and the time she began a fruitful life with him.

I love the quote from Dante, I am quite well read but had never quite understood the use of “our” life.
We can do this together.
You can see other people like alienem posting here, who have moved on

If not for anything else it will take you hours to read my comments

Dear Beamerus,

My heart and sympathies and HOPES all go out to you, first
off. You write:

I feel I am losing everything at the moment

You know how Dante’s inferno begins… “In the middle of our
life, I found myself in a dark wood, whre the true way was
wholly lost.” I love the way he says OUR life tho he is
talking about himself. For all of us, there are those times
when the bottom just vanushes and we seem to go down down
down. No matter what you know, even about this phenomenon,
it is incredibly frightening - I don’t think it could be
as extraordinarily rich as it is if these periods didn’t
shake us to the core, amke us reevaluate and completely
begin anew. The Buddhists call it “beginner’s mind” ... a
friend who just died, a gallery artist and wise teacher,
called it “not knowing.” My own statement around all this
is “learning to tolerate anxiety for growth.”

I came across you on a “stop drinking” thread where you
posted this
“My late father started drinking at 17, quit at age 57
after he had
lost everything.”

I am 57, I feel I am losing everything at the moment and
am trying to
change. However one of the problems that a lot of your
current 43> things refer to is solution of things on the
computer/internet rather
than Real Life.

Hmmm… even writing on Internet I try to write as
transpaperntly as possible so therte;s not much membrane
between Real Life and cyber-life… so I’m not exactly
certain what you mean here.

I would like to hear more of your Auden reading father if
you would
like to say more

I adored my father and could talk about him all day and all
night. However – are you in a 12th step program? In his home
AA group, people’s talks were recorded. I have something
like 15 of his talks which tell an incredible story, of his
spiritual and human awakening over the 20 years he lived
after sobriety. If you promise not to break MY anonymity
(which you would be able to figure out from these, I’m
sure), I can tell you where to write to order them from his
group. I think they reveal more than I ever could, and they
are highly entertaining to boot. Someone who was
transcribing them for me actually stopped drinking as a
result!

To understand the physiologically addictive nature of booze
as coupled with the creative impulse, I highly recommend
Thomas Darden’s book The Thirsty Muse.

May you find peace with yourself and your life. May the
things you feel like you are losing be either things which
MUST fall away in order for you to grow to whatever the next
stage is for you, or else appear to be lost but are actually
just changing form.

As I may have quoted here, my father used to say that he
didn’t have a drinking problem, he had a LIVING
problem. “What I had, ” he used to say, “was a drinking
SOLUTION.” May you find, as he did, through despair,
desperation, and hopelessness, a living solution which will
carry you over the floodwaters and into the life which was
given to you to live, and which is yours alone.

With sincerity,

ff

I am going to check out the Yahoo group. Looks good. I have myself struggled with the “external power” model of AA. I did join a delightful AA splinter group here in the Berkeley (of course) area called the Godless Heathens, but even my beloved heathens can be a bit doctrinaire. And really, it’s all about supporting one another.

There is no failure in the struggle, if you are struggling it means you are alive and still fighting. Don’t give up.

It can be done, as incredible as it seems sometimes, it can be.

I had my first drink around 4 weeks of age, at now at 37, I am living a life I never imagined, sober and alive!

You can read my story at http://www.reachingupforair.com/Debbier.htm

I also invite you or anyone else to visit my forum
http://www.reachingupforair.com/forums/index.php

You can do it, we all can ;)