Yet “success” frequently depends on spouses working together to solve whatever conditions the drinker is self-medicating. It’s even more important when you’re both drinking.

So what does working with us look like?

First we work as a team – whether you are an individual or a couple. That in itself is unique and also helps insure your success.

How? You get the benefit of our experience, both personal and professional. Mine as the ex-drinker and Mary Ellen’s as the family member frustrated by dysfunctional family dynamics. When working with couples this means you each have someone who understands your part of the problem.

Obviously no one is stuck with a particular gender view point either. We are both way past gender stereotypes.

Most importantly, you will avoid the kiss of death that dooms virtually all “Couples Counseling” – the triangle that results whenever 3 people are involved in any emotional encounter.

It’s impossible to avoid. Whatever the gender of the counselor, the client of the opposite gender is always going to feel ganged-up on and, sadly, they are frequently right. Even when it’s not true, it’s a great excuse to dismiss anything that’s said or suggested and to simply walk out the door.

But when it’s four of us?

The triangulalion isn’t there, nor are the excuses. Each of you has someone who understands your part of the couple’s dynamic. Each of you has an advocate, to some degree.

The result?

We can cut through your past with all of the grievences, justified or not, and shift the focus to the present and future and what you actually want.

Alcohol abuse is a symptom. The causes may be loneliness, boredom, anxiety, depression, pain, hormonal imbalances (yes, men get those, too), or any of a dozen other things, either alone or in combination.

You can endlessly blame each other, or you can fix things, but you can’t do both.

If you’re both drinking, you very difficult to fix your problem without your spouse or partner also fixing theirs.

And we’re the only program that allows this to happen – and, as usual, the research is clear. Heal the relationship or forget leaving the alcohol abuse behind.

There are also other reasons why your spouse’s involvement is important. Your spouse or partner needs to learn how to be supportive. They also need to understand that ending your alcohol abuse is going to affect them just as your drinking did.

Many people believe the myth that life won’t change – it’ll be the same except without the drinking. That is a total fantasy. Reality? Everything will change to one degree or another.

If you want a better life, if you want to grow and change, if you want to be more self-aware and in control of how your life will change for the better, then you need to call and let us help you through the process.

Don’t let negative change and/or failure overtake you – you don’t want to be road kill on the trip to a sober and satisfactory life. You are powerful – not powerless – and you deserve a life, not a “program”.  Both of you do.

The post Couples – why won’t anyone else work with couples? first appeared on Non12Step.

Please note, all of these courts have ruled that Alcoholics Anonymous is a religion or engages in religious activities:

• the Federal 7th Circuit Court in Wisconsin, 1984;
• the Federal District Court for Southern New York, 1994;
• the New York Court of Appeals, 1996;
• the New York State Supreme Court, 1996;
• the U.S. Supreme Court, 1997;
• the Tennessee State Supreme Court;
• the Federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, 1996;
• the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit;
• the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh District, 1996;
• the Federal Appeals Court in Chicago, 1996;
• the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, September 7, 2007.

The United States Supreme Court has refused to hear challenges to those rulings, or to change or over-turn those lower court decisions. By letting them stand, the Supreme Court has made them the law of the land.

There is no greater abuse of individuals by the courts these days than the continued orders to attend AA, AA /12 Step based treatment, or other coercive mandates to equally ineffective, and frequently counter-productive, forms of so-called treatment.

“No, Judge. No AA!”

Yes, you and your attorney may have to be emphatic – NO AA! You may have to offer alternatives to AA, and you may have to dig a little to find them, but we do exist.

What constitutes an AA alternative? Counseling and/or treatment based on research regarding what actually works including:

• CBT;
• Motivational Interviewing;
• Naltrexone;
• Fitness;
• Couples Counseling;
• Adult Development;
• Assertiveness Training

Remember too, it’s not just judges who sentence people to AA but also the licensing and certification boards that send “impaired professionals” to AA and 12 Step based treatment – a practice so fraught with graft and corruption that many states have eliminated the programs altogether.

Again – you cannot legally be required to join the AA cult!

Why do these abuses of power continue to appear?

Certainly ignorance of the law contributes, though judges are supposed to know what they can and can’t do. More often it’s the assumption that defendants and their lawyers won’t know their rights or will be too overwhelmed to object. Too often this assumption proves to be right and another poor sucker gets sent off.

But that doesn’t have to be you! You can “just say no” to AA and to the abusive and exploitive programs it has created – programs that actually prevent you from fixing your problems.

Worried about what lies ahead? Give us a call and discuss your particular situation and how we can help divert you away from AA and into a program that actually works at a fraction of the cost.

Don’t allow yourself to be punished repeatedly!

Just remember, “No, Judge. No AA!”

The post “No, Judge, No AA.” first appeared on Non12Step.

Why? Because successfully ending alcohol abuse depends on changing your behaviors in your day-to-day life and that means altering your relationship with your spouse. Remember, alcohol abuse is a “context” problem – it exists to fill a need within your daily life. Ending it means fixing the underlying problems so you no longer need to self-medicate for short term relief or avoidance.

Changing your activities and behaviors, however, is also going to affect everyone around you – especially spouses. Therefore, excluding your spouse from the treatment process pretty much dooms you to failure.

But there are other reasons, too.

If you’ve ever been to couple’s counseling you know that it almost instantly turns into a two on one event. With three people involved it’s almost inevitable that that’s going to happen. The result, of course, is zero progress, or worse, since any issues are obscured by this new triangle – him, her, therapist – and who gets the therapist on “their side” first.

We learned how to avoid that dynamic a long time ago – we work as a team with you as a couple. Makes it tough to hide behind the “you ganged up on me” excuse – and usually gives each of you an empathic advocate to boot.

But that requires skill and experience on our part – more things treatment programs with their para-professional, “in recovery”, counselors aren’t going to spend money on.

All  of that aside, the most important part of our couples model is based on the fact that no one has to wait on the spouse with the drinking problem!

That’s right! Instead of calling us and demanding to know how you can force someone else to stop drinking – which is impossible – you can begin the process of changing your behavior in the ways that are most likely to motivate your spouse to end his or her alcohol abuse.

Frankly, we have never had a husband or wife call and schedule a week with us to begin detaching from a spouse, without the spouse in question “suddenly” deciding it was time to come along and get help themselves. Funny how that works.

Why does it work?

Einstein noted that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.”

When it comes to spouses (really, any family member) and alcohol abuse, couples become locked into predictable patterns. Both of you, more comfortable with predictability than change, engage in this endless “you’re the problem, you go first” dance that never goes anywhere except around in the same old circle.

Most of us have also, at some level, incorporated the idea that alcohol is the problem and that if the drinker would just stop then everything would be okay. It would be nice if that were true, but it’s just another of those treatment industry myths, designed to placate family members.

Instead, the reality is that alcohol abuse is a short term coping mechanism that sabotages ever fixing real problems – things like loneliness, boredom, anxiety, anger, and passivity. If these underlying, and fueling, conditions are not addressed, then one is indeed doomed to forever being “in recovery” (a catch phrase that readily translates into “your can’t make me grow up”) and spouses are doomed to either playing second fiddle to the bottle, joining in, or escaping to a real life of their own.

But before you decide on option #3, the escape option – and we don’t recommend option  #1 or #2, don’t you think you should give actually fixing the problems a shot? That’s a lot cheaper and less disruptive than divorce – and usually leads to a far more interesting real marriage than our clients have ever known before.

Please! Don’t settle for coming second place behind your spouses bottle, or even worse in most cases, AA or Alanon, and don’t leave yourself wondering if your marriage might actually have been saved if you’d only invested that 5 days with us before you gave that lawyer a retainer for three times what we charge (and with many, many more billable hours to come).

Call us!

The call is free! The consultation is free! And the odds are excellent that at the very least you can create a far better future for yourself without incurring the cost of a lifetime of nagging doubts as to whether or not you did the right thing.

The post Couples first appeared on Non12Step.

So, if you’re looking for something better, something that’s individual, private, cost effective, and actually has a good chance of helping, give us a call. We’ll talk to you ourselves and, if we’re not the right program for you, we’ll suggest one of the few places that may be.

The post Ten Things I Wished I’d Known Before I Sent My Brother Off To Rehab first appeared on Non12Step.

It isn’t unusual for people to seek treatment for their alcohol abuse problems when divorce is looming on the horizon. Indeed, probably two thirds of our clients come to us with crumbling marriages. What is surprising is that at a few of these clients don’t really have an alcohol problem and many of the rest are abusing alcohol, but aren’t alcoholics.

How does that happen?

Simply put, the treatment industry has promoted a Catch-22 model: if you’re accused of being an alcoholic and you agree, then obviously you are. But if you don’t agree then you still are – you’re just in denial. As Mr. Tarkington observed long ago, it’s a label that can be hurled at anyone and it will stick. And divorcing spouses like to use it just for that reason, it will stick and they will be able to leverage it to get what they want or at least make your life miserable for a while longer.

What is the reality? At a recent conference in western Canada, one presenter after another pointed out what a few of us have known for a long time, most people seeking help with their alcohol problems aren’t alcohol dependent “alcoholics” – they’re alcohol abusers who can be cured. But you won’t hear that if you go looking for help, or, God help you, an honest evaluation.

Why not? Because over 95% of all alcohol treatment programs are based on the assumption that you’re a powerless and diseased alcoholic, or you’re an alcoholic who’s in denial. Regardless, the outcome of any evaluation will be to put you in one of those two categories and “treat” you accordingly. It’s not an attractive prospect for anyone who actually cares about their future.

Options? Your choices are few and far between, and you’re probably in a vulnerable state, too. Not the best circumstances for making life altering decisions. But before you allow yourself to be labeled through a process that has only one outcome and one prescription, protect yourself by doing at least a bit of research.

First, simply go to a few AA meetings. You will know almost immediately whether or not this model will work for you. If it does, then simply continue. You don’t need to waste tens of thousands of dollars on 12 Step based treatment that’s already available to you for free right in your own neighborhood.

Second, if you don’t find yourself at home at these meetings, then there’s little point in going to traditional treatment. Paying to go to meetings isn’t going to make them any more effective – just the opposite. Most treatment programs will also leave you with a permanent, and public, label. That’s something that can come back to haunt you in the future whether you decide to run for public office or buy life or health insurance.

Third, consider the options. Read through the web sites of organizations like Moderation Management (moderation.com) and the non-pathologizing Good Therapy site (goodtherapy.org). Both have listings of programs and individuals who do not ascribe to traditional – and ineffectual – treatment.

Finally, resist being labeled, demeaned, and railroaded. Regardless of whether you are being smeared, or are abusing alcohol, or are indeed alcohol dependent, you deserve to be assessed and helped with respect, care, competence, and confidentiality. Do not allow yourself to be diminished and manipulated by others’ agendas.

Remember, there are alternatives, and you aren’t powerless.

The post Unjustly Accused – Divorce, Alcoholism and the Alcohol Treatment Trap first appeared on Non12Step.

The answer is easy, though the change process may not be. Generally, those who can kick the 12 Step Habit are those who have something other than alcohol to build their lives around. As obvious as that may sound to many of you, it isn’t a given.

There are good reasons why 12 Step programs work for a small minority of alcohol abusers. The primary one is that they insist that you maintain your alcohol focused life. This allows you to continue drinking, for example, while pleading that you are “powerless” over your “disease.” That’s probably the primary attraction to these programs – you’re excused from either changing or assuming responsibility for your behavior.

Even if you do stop drinking you do so without upsetting the balance in your life. Roles may shift – bartenders become transformed into sponsors, for example, and drinking buddies into AA pals – but you, and alcohol, remain the focal point of your life and you can continue to escape other problems through your continuing focus on “working your program.”

Family members and employers may no longer complain about your absences and you, along with the rest of us, are safer on the roads and highways, but little else has changed in any meaningful way.

That brings us back to the question of you giving up your 12 Step affiliation. Is it possible? Is it desirable? Is it smart?

You will, of course, have to make that decision for yourself. The risks of giving up your routine are that you will slip back into your old drinking habits. The problem with any change is that we tend to create vacuums when we fail to replace old habits with better ones. Your 12 Step habit is less destructive than your drinking behaviors and the key to ending your 12 Step dependence is to replace it with productive and rewarding activities. If you do that then there is little risk of you relapsing to either drinking or endless recovery.

Successful change is a product of consideration, research, planning, and action. You probably found that moving from a “drinking focused life” to a “talking about drinking focused life” was not as big a change as you expected. But removing the alcohol entirely as your central focus will be a considerably bigger adjustment. This shift will create a major void which you would be well advised to fill gradually as you wean yourself away from the routines which have gotten you through the past months or years. This is not a time for abrupt departures from current habits.

As you begin to move towards other activities you can expect to encounter opposition. Family members who had an investment in your drinking and later in your recovery may resist yet another change – especially one that threatens the status quo that 12 Step “recovery” generally supports. Your meeting buddies will, if they notice at all, feel threatened by a possibility – that you needn’t be recovering forever – they have been comfortable ignoring or rejecting.

You can minimize these reactions by moving gradually.  Instead of going to three meetings a week, try substituting a visit to the gym for one. You’re easing out, not dropping out, and you are substituting one healthy activity for an unhealthy. As you become more comfortable with your new involvements so will those around you. This is real change, not merely the substitution of one alcohol based activity for another.

Real recovery means extinguishing a set of behaviors and developing a more rewarding life. It’s the best insurance you can get against a return to the bad old days. Yes, you will be tempted occasionally, but having a life which has no room for alcohol is the best way to keep it locked out.

The post Kicking the 12-Step Habit first appeared on Non12Step.

Why not?

Because as soon as one crab would start to climb out, the other crabs would drag him, or her, right back down into the bottom of the bucket. There’s no escape to life back in the ocean.

And that keeps happening until all of the crabs end up in the steamer.

The point?

Pick your support group with care. Most so-called alcohol support groups are, in fact, merely a bucket of crabs that will keep dragging you back down to their level. Try and escape and you’ll be warned that it’s too dangerous to get a life, or to mingle with “normies,” or grow up. It’s too dangerous to stop building your life around alcohol.

So you stay in the alcohol bucket, drinking or not, or complaining about your spouse, or parents, or children, or……

And what’s the point of all of this?

Obviously the point is to avoid actually making any real change. That’s what groups like AA and Alanon and Alateen do best, they help you maintain the “security of familiar miseries” – as we termed it 25 years ago – instead of fixing your life.

But why would you want to trade the illusory security of the crab bucket for an actual life out in the real world?

Remember, despite all of the con men and hucksters, alcohol abuse is a choice and you are free – not powerless – to make a different choice at any time. If you’re the spouse, parent, or child of an alcohol abuser, you are also free to make choices, including the choice to get a life of your own. Not a life focused around another’s alcohol abuse.

You can always choose to be recovered, not in crippling, life-denying, “recovery.” You can choose to be an ex-drinker just as many of us are ex-smokers. You can also choose to be someone who used to waste you life on a drinker but got a grip, got over him or her, and got a life of your own.

Please, alcohol abuse is a choice, not a disease, and you can escape the AA/Alanon Bucket of Crabs. Don’t let the doomed continue to drag you back to share their misery and their fate.

The post The Bucket of Crabs, or Why AA and Alanon Are Bad For Your Health first appeared on Non12Step.

Most Of Us, Understandably, Deny Our Alcohol Problems

People generally avoid looking too closely at their alcohol use. Over the long haul this can lead to problems, both real and mythical, that early and productive awareness might have helped avoid. The problem here is the mythology – not alcohol itself.

Most of us have been mislead into believing that the misuse, or over use, of alcohol is a progressive and irreversible condition – a terminal “disease” for which there is only demeaning and unending recovery, a condition many understandably consider worse than being a drunk. Before consigning yourself to hopelessness, or powerlessness, see where your alcohol use falls.

Healthy Alcohol Consumption

Yes, people who follow the recommendations, on average, live longer than either abstainers or heavy drinkers. The ideal is approximately two drinks of distilled spirits, two bottles of beer, or one half bottle of wine per day for an adult man, and half that for an adult women.

Alcohol Abuse

Abuse is defined as consumption which consistently exceeds the recommended levels and/or is done in isolation rather than socially. At this stage, remediation is common enough to be the norm, with a return to healthy use the usual outcome. Counseling may expedite the process and help with the underlying causes.

Alcohol Dependence

Dependence occurs after long periods of excessive use leading to social, physical, and emotional dependence. Drinking becomes a primary coping mechanism across multiple categories; for example, socially, recreationally, vocationally, and spiritually. Symptoms may include physical withdrawal following cessation, depression, increased isolation, significant weight gain, decreased liver function, and possible legal, financial, and/or employment problems.

While a return to moderate or healthy use is normal, a period of abstinence, possibly one to two years, is recommended. Many people who do this never return to drinking at all, having successfully modified their lives in other and more satisfactory ways.

Alcohol Addiction, or Alcoholism

Alcoholism results when a person’s physical, emotional, and psychological being is permeated by alcohol and its consumption. Distinct withdrawal symptoms – physical (i.e. tremors, seizures) and psychological ones (i.e. blackouts) – are present and alcohol related disintegration in several areas of life (i.e. financial, legal, vocational, marital, recreational, social, medical) is present.

At this stage both medical and counseling help is usually necessary given the physical, social, emotional, and psychological aspects. Recovery prospects are uncertain at best and outcomes vary. As always, motivation and a belief in personal efficacy, as opposed to “powerlessness,” are the primary factors in success.

Need Real Help?

We offer help tailored to you as an individual, and for varying degrees of alcohol involvement, not a “program” inflicted on everyone regardless of their condition. You wouldn’t expect, or accept, a single treatment for every stage and type of a real disease like cancer, don’t be fooled into accepting one for a non-disease like alcohol abuse.

We’re here to discuss the options available to you – confidentially and free of charge. Call and talk to us, Mary Ellen and Ed, at 888-541-6350. We’re real people with real solutions designed specifically for you.

The post Alcohol Abuse, Dependence and Addiction: Effective Non 12 Step Alternatives In Outpatient Alcohol Treatment first appeared on Non12Step.

Adult Children Who Drag Their Parents Down With Them

Nothing is sadder than the “over-age families” we see. These “children” are in their 30s, 40s, 50’s and sometimes 60s; their parents in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond. “Children” who won’t stop drinking or using, and their parents who can’t stop forking over the money that makes the alcohol and drug possible. Dependent adult children dragging parents down with them.

Of course you can easily to see the problem from the outside. Why would an “adult child” stop drinking when they can squeeze thousands of dollars a month out of old mom and dad and keep right on doing what they’ve done their whole lives? And how can mom and dad say no when their “child” will be homeless, their grandchildren hungry? Besides, it’s a disease, isn’t it? How can they deny their sick child?

You probably already know that that’s how the monthly cycle continues for years and years, and how it’s apt to go on until someone dies or the money runs out. The children will continue to manipulate parents, and parents will continue to feel guilty and wonder what they did to cause their child’s decision to go down the alcoholic/addict road.

Alcohol and drug abuse is a choice, not a disease

Of course you’ve always suspected, correctly, that the child’s choice was the child’s choice and had little or nothing to do with his or her parents. Even when childhood trauma played a role, it doesn’t excuse ongoing childishness. Searching for the current problems’ beginnings, even finding them, does nothing to fix the mess. As you’ve probably noticed, everyone just stays trapped in the swirl of emotions, habit, myth, and despair.

What about an intervention?

But suppose the cycle could be broken? In the past that’s usually meant orchestrating an “intervention” where the family confronts the drunk or addict, sets some limits, and then whisks them off to residential treatment for 30, 60, or 90 days. Assuming the problem is now taken care of, everyone relaxes and life supposedly gets better for everyone.

As you probably know, it hardly ever turns out that way. Confronted drunks frequently become angry drunks; residential treatment fails about 95% of the time; family resolutions collapse; and the abuser returns even more solidly excused than ever by “powerlessness” and “disease” myths. Tensions mount and bank accounts have taken a $30,000 – $200,000 hit.

There is an alternative

A brother and sister, Terry and Jack, came to see us because their younger brother Mike was draining their parents’ life savings to support his habit. There’d been an intervention and “treatment” but the manipulation and abuse continued. “It isn’t going to stop,” Karen said, “until they’re all dead or broke.”

You’ve probably seen this problem before, but this time we had a suggestion. Instead of threats and ultimatums, we recommended a carefully planned disengagement. No threats, no expectation that Mike would change, just a gradual change in the family dynamics that would, over the course of a year, result in Mike being on his own.

How, exactly, does that work?

We’re sure it’s obvious to you that Mike isn’t the only one with a problem here. His relationship with his parents and brother and sister also played a role. As long as that stayed the same, nothing would change. But entrenched relationships don’t usually change without some outside help. The old habits and behaviors are too strongly established.

The difference here is that we interrupted the old patterns by inserting ourselves between Mike and his parents. A meeting was held – Mike attended because that’s where he’d get his next check – and it was explained that no one was going to bother him anymore about his drinking and drugging. However, the amount of his “support” would be reduced by 8% a month over the next year until it is down to $0.

You’ve probably figured out that this plan probably wasn’t going to work by itself. Mike, having heard empty threats for years about being cut off, was confident that his parents would cave in, as they always had before. The difference here was that the money was routed through us, insulating the parents, and they were the ones receiving the counseling and support. Mike was also free to receive help, but it wasn’t required. What he decided to do was up to him – as it should be for any adult.

You Can Only Treat The Willing

The real truth is that people only change when they want to – not when others want them to. Working with the family to change the situation is effective because the family wants to change the situation. Any other strategy is just a waste of time, money, and effort.

You’re wondering, “But what about Mike?”

The usually overlooked part in all of this is the fact that if the family changes its relationship to Mike, Mike will have to change, too. As financial support dwindles, he will have to make some changes.

As you can imagine, Mike was angry about this sudden diversion in the cash flow. In this particular case, his anger actually motivated him to start managing himself and his life again for the first time in a decade.

Yes, there were glitches and lapses and mom did occasionally slip Mike some extra money, but the overall plan came off as intended.

Why did this work?

This “intervention” worked because it focused on the total picture and all of the people and dynamics involved. We did not single out Mike as “the problem” and we didn’t let labels and myths keep him from being held responsible for either fixing his problems or living with the consequences himself. More importantly, we worked with the family members who wanted the situation to change, ignoring Mike, who obviously had a vested interest in things staying the same.

As you can see, it worked because we focused on the people who wanted to change rather than trying to force change onto someone else. Whether dealing with a family, a couple, or anyone else, success always means working with whomever is motivated; skipping labels and self-justifying excuses; focusing on the present and future, not the past; and actively instituting new behaviors.

All of this sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Then why not call today and let us provide real help for your family? 888-541-6350

The post Helping Parents of Adult Alcoholics and Addicts With Non 12 Step Alternatives To AA first appeared on Non12Step.