1. Alcohol does not make you feel very good about yourself. Alcohol is a depressant and so it can often make you feel sad and depressed. Have you ever woken up and hated yourself because you can’t stop drinking? Or ever had a blazing argument with a loved one – directly caused by alcohol?
2. Alcohol does not make you feel healthy. After the initial kick from that first sip of alcohol, alcohol can make you feel unwell. Alcohol is a poison after all.
3. Alcohol can cause embarrassing situations. How many embarrassing things, that you can remember, have happened to you when you were in a drunken stupor?
4. Alcohol piles on the weight. No doubt about it, alcohol robs your body of essential nutrients and piles on lots of calories too.
5. Alcohol is costly. Have you ever sat down and worked out how much you spend on alcohol per week, per month or per year? And don’t forget to include the cab costs you needed because you couldn’t drive. When I calculated the cost, I spent over $2000 a year just on alcohol. But have you ever also worked out how many hours of life you lost over a week, month and year because you had blacked out, slep’t badly and felt so bad the next day you could not function properly?

So with all the reasons above just why do we drink? There are many reasons and apart from alcohol’s addictive properties, often it’s because we perceive we cannot have a good time without it. I know I used to think that, but realized what a sad reflection of my life and of me that was. Another reason might be that it gives you a false sense of confidence and makes you do or say things that you otherwise wouldn’t dare. Or alcohol is often used to help a person unwind. And if you can unwind with just one glass of alcohol, then that might be fine for you. However for me having one drink was harder than having no drinks. I could never stop at just one drink. If you can examine the reasons that you drink, you can begin the journey of discovering other ways to make you feel happy, relaxed and confident. Alcohol Hypnosis products helped me with that.

Peer pressure can also make it difficult to give up drinking. Drinking alcohol is such an accepted part of western culture that often it is your best friends who will try to encourage you to keep drinking – you not drinking makes them feel uncomfortable. Or you might worry that your friends will find you boring if you don’t drink. When people ask you why you don’t drink, tell them that you are alcohol intolerant – that it makes you really ill – I found that people seem to be more accepting of that. Definitely do not say that you don’t need alcohol to have a good time as it will make them feel bad. After a while they’ll get used to it – just be prepared to be the designated car driver.

If you decide to give up alcohol, I hope as I have, you will be pleasantly surprised at how much you can enjoy life without alcohol. It’s a great feeling to enjoy real belly laughs without any alcohol inducement and it’s a great feeling to go to bed sober, have a great night’s sleep and wake up feeling fresh, clear headed and hangover free.

Let me leave you with one final thought: If you hadn’t been a drinker, would your life be any different now?

An extensive study of 15,000 adults* found that those who drink more alcohol tend to consume less fruit and vegetables, make poorer food choices all round, and consume more calories from both the alcoholic beverages and foods high in unhealthy fats and added sugars. Alcoholic drinks by themselves are really high in calories. A small glass of white wine for example is about 90 calories; a regular beer is about 150 calories and that innocent Marguerita will set you back a whopping 450 calories.

So why do we crave food after a binge drinking session?

1. The study found that people who drink more alcohol, eat less omega-3 fatty acids, which are fats that are extremely important to enable our brains to work properly. These fats are found in fish like salmon and tuna. However alcohol also actively depletes these omega-3s from your brain and not enough omega-3s can also increase the craving for more alcohol and food. When you combine too few omega-3s, with too many omega-6 fatty acids, (the everyday fats you find in a typical American diet), it causes an imbalance which increases the craving for alcohol and food, and an inability to feel satiated.

2. Alcohol is also high in carbohydrates which are turned into sugar in your body. That sugar goes into your bloodstream and increases your blood sugar level. Your body then automatically responds by producing more insulin to lower your blood sugar level. This is also why you can feel shaky, dizzy or tired. To overcome this feeling of lethargy and tiredness from the low blood sugar level, your body sends out hunger signals that tell you to eat more so your blood sugar can get back to normal levels.

3. Alcohol is also a diuretic, which means it encourages the body to lose more water that it takes on by stopping the production of the body’s anti-diuretic hormone. This therefore makes you want to urinate more often and so you lose more fluid from the body which causes dehydration. Dehydration slows down your metabolic rate, which is not good for weight loss, but in addition dehydration is often confused with hunger so you eat more. So if you stop drinking altogether, you are going to lose weight. Firstly you will not be consuming the heavy calories from alcoholic drinks, secondly you will not get those urges to eat all those fatty and sugary foods, and lastly you won’t get that dehydrated feeling which makes you eat more. And naturally you will feel much healthier.

* A joint study by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) led by Dr Breslow, National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) , published April 2005 in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

Please help others by sharing your experiences with weight loss after stopping drinking by commenting below.

If you are a heavy drinker then always consult a trained medical professional and be honest about your alcohol intake as alcohol withdrawal can include severe complications such as seizures and hallucinations that can lead into what is termed “Delirium tremens” a medical emergency, which has a 5% mortality rate.

If you are more of a social drinker and less chemically dependent on alcohol, then you might consider an Alcohol Detox at home as the Alcohol Detox symptoms might be as “mild” as getting the shakes, sweats, nausea, diarrhea, headache, anxiety, a rapid heart beat, and increased blood pressure. Although these symptoms are uncomfortable, they are not necessarily dangerous. The difficulty for you is that they are often accompanied by the “craving” for more alcohol, making the decision to continue abstinence much more difficult to make.

If you are more of a social drinker you may be able to avoid many of the mild withdrawal symptoms by gradually reducing your intake of alcohol over time. For example you might ensure you drink lots of water in between each glass of alcohol. Or you could limit the amount you drink, or the days that you drink alcohol. For many people however having to limit oneself to say one drink a night is more difficult than having no drinks, as once one has the taste of alcohol it is sometimes difficult to stop at one.

If you are looking to do a home alcohol detox, and you are not a heavy drinker, then you can look to incorporate the following recommendations:

1. Diet
You can find many detox diet plans out there that generally start with a couple of days of fasting with water only, followed by a gradual increase of foods like fruits and vegetables. However unless you have strong will power, many of these detox diets are so restrictive that you can’t maintain them for long. Worse, especially if used long term, detox diets can cause harm.
So for you the best way to detox your body from alcohol might be to not go on a restrictive fasting diet but rather eat a balanced proper diet, eat more fruits and vegetables and reduce or cut out your intake of sugars and caffeine. Studies have shown that anything containing sugar or coffee will increase alcohol cravings. That includes therefore junk food, sodas, desserts and caffeinated drinks.

2. Sleep
Sleep gives the body a chance to heal and allows the mind to rest after the day’s activities so that you can be fresh and able to face the next day. However for many people coming off alcohol, getting to sleep and remaining asleep can be a big problem for some months after alcohol withdrawal. Sleep issues may indeed be one of the reasons why a person first became addicted to alcohol in the first place. Therefore ensure that during your alcohol detox, you are taking enough time to rest, and try taking herbal teas and baths to relax you at night before going to bed.

3. Exercise
An exercise program will help you sweat out toxins from your body and also create more of those feel good endorphins to make you feel better about yourself. Any exercise is good but many recovering alcoholics have found Bikram Yoga to be extremely beneficial. Not only does Bikram Yoga exercise every muscle, joint and organ in your body but it is done in a room heated to 105 degrees meaning that you sweat out all the toxins from alcohol abuse at the same time. You will feel amazing afterwards. Be sure to commit to a week’s worth of classes before you decide whether this type of exercise is for you and be absolutely sure to arrive at a Bikram Yoga class well hydrated i.e, not suffering from a hangover.

4. Take Alcohol Detox Dupplements – Alcohol depletes a wide range of nutrients, including B vitamins, and so it is important to ensure that your diet supplies enough. The following herbs and nutritional supplements are recommended for alcohol withdrawal:
• Milk Thistle
• Kudzu
• Beta-carotene
• Magnesium
• Glutamine
• Vitamins (especially vitamin B), including: A, B3, B6, C, D, E.
• Primrose Oil
The best supplements for alcohol detox and alcohol withdrawal are found here.

5. Find a buddy – A support system is vital for decreasing your alcohol use at home. Someone that will hold you accountable, and help you through the withdrawal symptoms including ensuring that you drink lots of fluids and electrolytes.

Have you ever tried an alcohol detox at home? Did you succeed and what helped you to get through it?

What is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is described as a relaxed, focused state of mind where the brain is more open to suggestion. Hypnosis produces a change in the brain wave activity, similar to that time just before sleep when the alpha state is entered. Anyone can by hypnotized and in fact we all experience hypnosis every day even though we may not even realize it. For example if you have ever been engrossed in music, a book or a movie where you lost all track of time then you were experiencing a kind of hypnotic trance. Unlike some myths floating out there about hypnosis, you are completely awake during the process and you are completely in control of everything you do both during and after the hypnosis session.

Does Hypnosis work?

The scientific evidence of Hypnotherapy’s significant benefits is nothing short of stunning.
Hypnosis has been around since the early 18th Century, and today it is widely used in many areas of therapy, health and life in general and is an accepted form of treatment within the medical establishment. For example the National Institutes of Health recently declared hypnosis effective in reducing pain from cancer and other chronic conditions.

In a 2004 study (Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2004 Jan;52(1):73-81) hypnosis was used to help people quit smoking. Upon completion of treatment, 81% of patients reported they had stopped smoking, and 48% reported abstinence at 12 months post treatment.

Over the last 10 years, scientists have finally discovered how the brain works when addicted. Science has also discovered the brain can actually be “re-wired” even as adults, through a changing of neurons, reorganizing their networks and functions through new experiences; neuroplasticity. So good alcoholism hypnosis works to stop the addictive patterns in your subconscious, release your internal conflicts, and create new neural connections. It helps you get rid of the drives that keep pushing you to drink and encourages you to form a new image of yourself as a non drinker.

Alcoholism hypnosis has helps thousands of people cure their addition, in many cases remarkably quickly. If you have tried alcohol hypnosis, then please add your comments below to help others benefit from your experience.

The starting point was becoming conscious that I had a problem. For me the hangovers were not as bad as the fact that I slep’t so badly. I would drink, than go to bed at the normal time – or earlier – and then wake up about 1am and not be able to sleep again until dawn when my then young children would come in and bounce on my bed. So aside from the headache, the nausea and generally looking terrible the next day I would just be completely exhausted. That made me extremely irritable and I hated myself the entire next day. I repeated this for years. Over time it dawned on me that for a few hours enjoyment of drinking, that I would lose the entire next day in misery. And my resolve never to drink again was there all day until the next evening when it seemed to disappear.

The other thing that I noticed at the time was how my kids just seemed to be high on life without the need for alcohol. They get up in the morning with great bundles of energy and seem to be able to giggle and laugh at the slightest thing. Wouldn’t that be wonderful I asked myself to be like that and not have to lean on alcohol for the laughs. I started looking out for adults who didn’t drink – ie teetotalers. Granted there are some who are quite frankly boring but there are other teetotalers who are high on life and have a great time at parties and other social events, just without the alcohol. That fascination with observing teetotalers started me thinking how wonderful it would be to be like that.

So I read a few books on alcoholism and how to stop drinking. One of them I remember was Allen Carr’s book. He gives a vivid example that stuck with me on how alcohol addiction is a slippery road into hell. I also did a couple of hypnosis courses at home which slowly started me back to the road of recovery. Guess what? I sometimes have an occasional drink, and because I rarely drink the taste is awful. Do you remember your first ever drink? You wondered how adults drank such horrible tasting stuff? But because it was “cool”, you kep’t going with it until you acquired a taste for it. And now I hate how after even one sip of alcohol, I can feel it coursing through my veins. And I get this dull kind of feeling all over. And then I don’t sleep. And although I have not had more than a few sips I wake up in the morning with this horrible taste in my mouth. I guess that must be something to do with the fact that alcohol is just poison in disguise – literally.