The Real Reason Alcoholics Anonymous Fails at Stopping Cravings. And What Actually Stops Cravings.
- 18 hours ago
- 10 min read
Anyone who has been through the initial as well as the long protracted alcoholic withdrawal, which lasts up to the two year mark, is well familiar with alcohol cravings. As a matter of fact, it is the craving that causes most to be unsuccessful in their attempt to rid themselves of the addiction forever. After all, it was the constant crave for the addicted substance that kept them in its grips for many years.
During the initial acute withdrawal phase, I remember very clearly not being able to comprehend being without alcohol for a week, let alone the rest of my life. I had been in the chronic phase of alcoholism for thirteen years. During the last five of those addicted years, there wasn’t a time when I wasn’t working that I wasn’t drinking. All physical fitness had ceased as my boxing gloves had gathered about an inch of dust. Because like every addict, I had become addicted to alcohol to the point where if the supply was disrupted more than a day, the cravings would ensure the route to resupply be re-established quickly. And I don’t think the last couple of years those liquid lines were ever disrupted.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, you end the friendship with John Barleycorn. Unfortunately, the cravings don’t end with him. The first five days they are secondary to the physiological sickness that follows the cessation of alcohol in the acute withdrawal phase. No one forgets that walk through the lower level of the inferno. Acute alcoholic withdrawal was probably the worst thing I have ever been through in my life. It wasn’t as much as a craving as a want to just stop the tsunami of sickness that had encompassed me. I walked through the fire alone, which I don’t recommend, yet managed to make it through to the other side. Many will be in a rehab of some sort, where it is insured they complete this god-awful first phase of recovery.
But it is after the acute withdrawal that the cravings drive their stakes in. And it is the craving which will cause most to be unsuccessful in staying sober. Especially in the second phase to thirty to forty-five days and the third phase to six months. But even after the two year protracted withdrawal phase is completed, the point where I state you can claim cure, cravings will at times raise their horns. For even though I claim you can be cured, Johnny B always wants you to return to his leper’s camp of disease. And I thoroughly believe that the methods of Alcoholics Anonymous will lead you right back to that very terrain. My methods to cure will keep you walking on the trail of holistic health, far away from his established land.
Most fail their attempt at recovery in the early phases of alcoholic withdrawal. What I call phase one and two. The five day acute withdrawal is phase one. Again, phase two concludes somewhere between thirty to forty-five days and the next phase concludes at the six month mark. They say that you have a good chance to stay sober if you make six months. They are probably right. But many fall off the wagon of sobriety even after six months. Because of those cravings.
The former alcoholic believes he isn’t strong enough to battle Johnny’s sent minions for the rest of his life. What he doesn’t realize, because the AA recovery isn’t properly orchestrated, is that with a healthy holistic recovery program that I offer, he won’t be battling cravings for the rest of his life. The recovery program I propagate will eventually minimize cravings to almost nonexistent if he can make it past those first few months. AA’s program actually induces these symptoms of wanting your old friend back.
First and foremost, there is no easy way to get through the first six months, whether you are in the rooms of AA or following my program. If you have been addicted to a substance for years, you can’t just expect to feel fantastic a few weeks after you have given up the substance. And when people are two months sober and realize they don’t feel fantastic, is when the urge to return to that familiar friendship surfaces. If people knew that there were mileposts, where the cravings would lessen as they passed them, they would be more inclined to just continue stepping forward. But AA’s methods don’t reveal this to them. Their protocol keeps them in a cycle where its members are walking in a continuous circle of physical and emotional negativity instead of progressing their way forward to a better and cured life.
By understanding the phases of cravings, one can not only see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel but can learn how to handle these symptoms in the interim. Because like the recovery, which is a phase by phase process in my method, so is the decrease of these symptoms of want. And unlike the AA program, my protocol minimizes these symptoms, not increases their frequency and intensity.
The initial cravings in the second phase, from the end of the five day acute withdrawal to approximately thirty to forty-five days, the intensity and frequency are at the very worst. The frequency is almost continuous and the intensity is at high levels most of the time. Your mouth will water for the prior offending substance most of your waking hours. At this point, you are fighting for your life—literally. I don’t even tell people to start a physical fitness program, meditative program and structured diet at this phase. You create a short timer calendar to day forty-five and do whatever you have to do as you mark the days completed toward the end of this second milepost. Whatever additives you need to fight off these demons, you use. For you have the rest of your life to transform to healthy lifestyle after this phase. But you must get through this second tier of recovery first. Most people fail here because of the intensity of these cravings.
This is the point where I would actually recommend hiding in AA’s rooms as a temporary measure. I don’t recommend adopting their methods, getting a sponsor or starting their steps, all of which will lead you to lifelong imprisonment in their rooms. But one doesn’t realize how surrounded by alcohol one is until he suddenly quits it. Every bar sign, neon light, advertisement and billboard sends that shock wave of want into your system in this phase. The best place you can be is in a rehab center for thirty days in which some will reside, but most simply can’t afford that or can’t afford to be off work. So you work in the day and hang out in the rooms at night until this phase passes. Holistic recovery isn’t your goal in this phase, checking off the days until you reach day forty-five is the focus.
And you have to put in your mind that these symptoms are temporary if you follow my program long term. It will not be like this forever. Thirty to forty-five days is the worst of it before the tide slowly recedes. You have your contract with yourself from the first day you put down the bottle for good. And you have to put in your mind that you are going to resolutely follow it. As I’ve said in other articles, you have to develop the willpower to follow through. If you are a weak person, there is nothing that says you can’t become a strong one. But there isn’t a soft solution during this phase. Either you develop the willpower to follow through or you go back to being an addict. That’s it and that’s all.
After the second phase concludes, holistic recovery begins. The cravings will still be there, but you will notice the frequency and intensity is decreasing. And you should celebrate this fact. For if you just defeated thirty plus days of continuous symptoms with maximal intensity, you can defeat intermittent symptoms with less intensity. You will begin to see your power over alcoholic cravings, not the other way around.
This is where Alcoholics Anonymous completely drops the ball. After one would complete the second phase, they continue to smoke at the breaks in the rooms, continue to guzzle caffeine and ingest those endless sugar cookies. They do this to ward off the cravings. Ironically, the make up of their meetings will induce the frequency and intensity of those very symptoms of want. Sugar, caffeine and nicotine will, by an alter effect, make you crave alcohol. And the negative reinforcement in those meetings will lead to negative mindset—which also induces cravings as your neurochemistry is programmed to deal with the negative with alcohol in the recent past. AA is literally setting themselves up for failure in the battle to defeat these cravings. And the majority who lose that battle end up returning to being addicts of alcohol.
This is why I state that after the second phase ends, at approximately forty-five days, the former addict should begin the holistic recovery program. This is where I would start decreasing the sessions in the rooms to be replaced with the gym. Physical fitness activity alone will decrease the frequency and intensity of cravings. AA protocol increases the frequency and intensity of cravings and endorses poor lifestyle—physically and emotionally. Adding an emotional program of yoga or other meditative activities also decreases the frequency and intensity of cravings. Telling your story every night in the rooms will have the opposite effect.
By six months, if you were using AA’s rooms to hide, you should be completely out of their grasp. By now you should be physically fit, on an emotional meditative program, engaged in a healthy diet and smoking should be a thing of the past. You will find that the intensity and frequency of cravings will now be reaching the minimal states toward the end of six months. But if you ask an AA member at six months how he is doing, he will tell you he is still smoking, still fighting off cravings and still sitting in the rooms six nights a week. The minority who haven’t gone back to John Barleycorn.
After six months is when, if you are engaging in the healthy lifestyle described above, the cravings will really being to abate. At times you will have an intense one that may last for hours. But you have now been through this so many times that you ride it like a surfboard, which goes over an approaching wave. And those intense episodes will begin to be few and far in-between. That won’t be so for the AA member, who is still inducing cravings every night with those additives of sugar, caffeine and nicotine. Not to mention, they are destroying their health and not exercising while sitting in those rooms every night. Is it any wonder so many from AA do not remain sober? Because they reside in an environment whose methods literally push the want for drink in every meeting.
Will you have cravings after my proclaimed mark of cure at two years? Short answer is yes but infrequently now. There are certain triggers that will, at these infrequent times, induce intense, hours- lasting cravings. Once I was working the corner of a Thai boxing event in Thailand. After the fight, I had a craving that matched in intensity one in the first thirty days of recovery. That mouth watering type. I think the event ignited my old neuro programming of my own Thai boxing days where I drank heavily. It lasted for about four or five hours. But I knew it would fade as I had so many cravings I defeated since the day I made the contract. And it did. Every once in a while, I will have a trigger that induces this type of response. But most of the time I don’t. The huge majority of the time, like in the ninety-nine percentile frame, I don’t think about alcohol at all.
What about events and get-togethers where alcohol is abundant? I usually drink a soda water with two limes at these outings. Most times today I don’t even have cravings at these occurrences. After the protracted two year mark, sometimes I would, but they would be minimal to moderate in intensity and the duration would be the same—an hour or two. But the more years that pass, the less these symptoms occur. The holistic lifestyle I keep mentioning in my articles are responsible for these very transient and minimal symptoms today. Progression of Self also keeps cravings at bay. Simply put, when you place yourself in these states of positivity and progression, the mind doesn’t need an escape from life. Which is why we all began drinking to begin with in our earlier days.
Most of the time today, at seventeen years sober, the cravings are incredibly infrequent and transient. When I say transient today, I mean the symptoms last a minute or two and may be once every one or two weeks. I haven’t had an intense one due to a trigger for well over a decade.
I attribute these very minimal symptoms today to my physical and emotional program of recovery. And the fact that I continue to engage in activities to progress my life in all planes. I’m not thinking about alcohol when I’m thinking about the next stock pick or article for this blog. There are no thoughts of a renewed friendship with John Barleycorn when I’m engaged in my fifteen minute Zen meditation routine. Or when I’m on a trek to Macchu Picchu.
My overall point is that this holistic program will defeat these cravings. Going to AA will induce them. Their meetings will induce them physically and mentally. This is why their program needs to be reconstructed from the ground up from the methods that Bill and Bob introduced. It isn’t a healthy existence to engage in unhealthy practices that bring the very cravings they wish to avoid. If they would adopt my methods and use the rooms as a temporary measure, their members would have much less of these cravings, which by axiom would lead to higher success rates in sobriety. But they won’t. They have become too much of a cult to listen to reason. And as long as they avoid reason and refuse to consider a return to a holistically healthy life, they will continue to have abysmal success rates.
I’m offering a way out. A way to cure. A way to healthy living and progression of Self. A chance to become a better being than you were even before you picked up that bottle. And if you follow my method, you won’t have to worry about the relapse which they state is part of recovery. For the cravings will eventually lie down next to the long dead corpse of John Barleycorn.
To journey on a tale of epic transformation on a 2,660 mile trail check out: THE SHEPHERD AND THE RUNNINGWOLF: A PATH TO FORGIVENESS ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL
(Usually free on KDP)
(Usually free on KDP)
For the condensed and orderly version of how I beat the addiction of alcoholism check out: THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK
(Usually free on KDP)
John Barleycorn taken from Jack London's book, John Barleycorn. First published 1913
Comments