Clear Head

Of all the joys of being truly free, one of the greatest is having a clear head at all times. When I have good time, I know it’s genuine. I am able to remember the nights out, all of them. I can remember every conversation , every event, every minute of every day. I wake up and feel awake and alive. What a thought. I have found my true confidence and true courage. I no longer wake up wondering what I did the night before. I never ever have a hangover. Let me just emphasise that: I never ever have a hangover!

I am always refreshed, alert and energised in the morning . I have the genuine choice of fully utilising every single one of the precious days that we have while we are on this planet. I am able to drive my car whenever I want. I now have the freedom to go out every night without the worry of having to exercise control over my drug intake. I can go dancing until the early hours and still feel good the next day. I no longer have to spend my hard-earned money pouring poison down my own throat; a poison that controlled so many aspects of my life. I never have to take alcohol to enjoy or cope with my life. I no longer have to say sorry to people for my outrageous behaviour when I was ‘out of it,’ most of which I could never remember anyway. I suddenly have tremendous amounts of that most precious commodity – time. I never lose time because of the effects of either being on the drug or the mental and physical effects

of trying to eliminate it. To me, every day is now as precious as the next. I have more money, much, much better health, more peace of mind, more self-respect, more courage, more confidence and tons more freedom. All of these are the benefits of a life free from alcohol addiction. The biggest gain of all is being mentally and physically free forever.

Someone in one of my sessions once asked me, ‘If alcohol was free of charge and didn’t do any harm to you or others, would you drink again?’ The answer was without hesitation, ‘No way, never, not in a million years.’ They had to ask again, ‘Did you mishear? I said if alcohol was free of charge and there were no health risks involved, would you drink again?’ Again I repeated, ‘No way, never, not in a million years.’ The reason is because the difference is like night and day. It’s the fact of the daily mental and physical slavery that never really occurs to drinkers. It’s the having to drink in order to enjoy or cope with your life. It’s the having to work your life around the time when can you have the next fix. It’s the very lack of genuine freedom and real choice that never really dawns on drinkers.

I always said that I chose to drink and I believed that to be true but what genuine choice is there when you have to do something in order to cope or enjoy your life? It is freedom from this dependency that is the greatest gain. Most drinkers delude themselves into thinking that only those that society labels alcoholics have an alcohol dependency and have lost control. My point is that if you have to exercise control, you are dependent and are

never really in control anyway. Why would you want to have this constant battle to exercise control over something that does absolutely nothing for you at all? That is why I will never drink again even if alcohol was free.

In the bad old days, every time I went to a party after a few in the pub, my first thought was not who would be there but to wonder whether there would be any drink left. If there wasn’t, I would not enjoy myself. I couldn’t, not without my drug. Before I spoke to anyone at a social gathering, I would have a drink. On many occasions I would not go out because I knew that I would drink. So I stayed in to avoid the temptation. If I didn’t want to drink, why couldn’t I just go out and not drink? It was because I was not in control and the drug dictated where I went and whether I enjoyed myself. That is dependency.

No longer to be dependent is one of the best feelings in the world. I relied on a substance that, in real terms, did absolutely nothing for me at all. I just couldn’t see it as I was locked in a world that appeared real. If you see things from the outside it becomes incredibly obvious but if you are locked in a world that you are convinced is real, how will you ever know? The Hollywood actor Jim Carrey starred in a film that fooled his perception too. Let me explain a bit about the anything but …