Alcohol dependency is a slow process of attrition, a relentless wearing down of both your mental and physical resistance; where once you had control of it, sadly it may now have control over you? What you face right now is a world dominated by a substance that once softened the blows of life, one that is consequently rendering you powerless to cope with even the trivial hurdles of normal existence. A prisoner of chemical abuse, in a cage of dependency, that is of your own making.

So how do you break free?

The first step is to ask four simple questions of yourself, the four fundamental questions of CAGE. CAGE is a questionnaire that is used widely as a screening test for alcoholism; it was developed originally to identify the “hidden alcoholic” in hospitals and primary health care settings. The word CAGE is an acronym of its four questions, Cut, Annoyed, Guilty and Eye-opener.

1. Have you ever felt you needed to Cut down on your drinking?
2. Have people Annoyed you by criticizing your drinking?
3. Have you ever felt Guilty about drinking?
4. Have you ever felt you needed a drink first thing in the morning (Eye-opener) to steady your nerves or to get rid of a hangover?

To answer yes to 2 or more questions, indicates clinical significance and points to the fact that you may have alcohol dependence.

But how far down the line are you and what are the consequences?

One final test will reveal the true level of your dependency, accurately and give you a real indication of where you find yourself now. The test is called AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) and was commissioned by the World Health Organisation as a means to identifying persons with hazardous and harmful patterns of alcohol consumption.

AUDIT if a freely available test for health care professionals which scores your responses to multiple choice questions. This test is not a pass or fail, it merely acts as a screening test to highlight excessive drinking habits and acts as a framework for health care teams to help hazardous and harmful drinkers to reduce or cease they’re alcohol consumption.

But what if you are not a health care professional and need answers right now – what good is it if you cannot interpret what it means?

Fortunately this is not a problem; this test can be readily found on-line in an automated format, it will take no more than a few minutes to complete and the results mirror perfectly the guidelines presented in the original AUDIT report, giving you the vital information you need to take action and seek recovery.

The signs of alcoholism are often masked by our everyday existence, we need that certain jolt that will open our eyes to the harm we are inflicting on ourselves. Alcohol dependency is not just the chronic street alcoholic, it’s the problem drinker, the long term abuser, the person who drinks just to cope; everyday people like you and me who have tried to soften the daily blows of life with alcohol, but who have simply lost control.

Just how do you say goodbye to a companion of many years acquaintance.

What does it take do break this bond of dependency?

You have to look at it this way…

Alcohol gets to be that reckless part of you, that alter ego that appears like a black sheep of the family, only to rain on your parade.

It’s the Jekyll part of your psyche, that when primed reeks havoc all about it, then leaves you to tidy up the trail of destruction it leaves in its wake.

It’s the kind of friend that moves in uninvited, steals your food, makes out with your boyfriend and doesn’t pay a dime in rent.

The perennial bad tenant, that wrecks your property, lets weeds grow in your garden and then only departs when forcibly evicted.

A travelling salesman, who promises you the world, sells you a vision of utopia, takes your hard earned cash and never delivers!

But above all it’s a substance that wrecks your health and causes so much unnecessary suffering, a drug you willingly pour down your neck for the sake of sociability and to block out the daily pounding of life.

It’s not until you can see it for what it is, an interloper in an otherwise beautiful existence, that you realise that this substance takes on a life of its own, once you allow it to enter your body. Alcohol becomes a living thing, once you can name it and point an accusing finger in its direction.

But be aware of one thing, like the vampire at the door, you invited it in and because of that, it is sucking you dry. Alcohol can make you into one of the thousands of un-dead that roam this world, cut off from the beauty of life, because the very spirit of them has been sucked out and replaced with a parasitic substance, that lives only to be fed by its host.

Breaking the bond of dependency comes down to one thing, it’s the day you discover for yourself, that the substance you thought was a crutch to lean on was actually the apparatus that disabled you in the first place.

When you see alcohol for what it is, a substance that harms your body and sucks up all your hard earned cash, then the process of banishing it from your life gets that much easier.

The hardest part of giving up is making that decision to do so, its one only you can make and it’s like parting from an old friend. But as with certain friendships, there comes a time when you outgrow each other and need to follow different paths.

Ahead of you lays a fork in the road, dependant on what route you take, it will decide the future outcome of your life.

Choose wisely, take one step at a time and just keep looking ahead.  Never turn back and your life will blossom beyond belief.

And please don’t worry, newer, better friends will join you on the journey, you won’t be alone!

As ever – my thoughts are always with you…

When will be the day that you give up alcohol?

Today…  tomorrow… perhaps even next week?

Tell you what.. and you may find this hard to believe?

The time is right when the level of self loathing and resentment inside peaks and you do one of two things; you consider ending it all or you decide to fight back!

There is a primitive part of us that demands our continued existence, a biological function that was never lost in the entire evolution of the human species. It nags us to live at all costs and guides us away from harm. It links to everything and uses what ever tool it can lay its hands on to keep itself alive. It’s the very core of our survival instinct and when the time is right it will let you know!

Physically and mentally it will nag you constantly… and it will use guilt and fear to kick you into realisation. It will bug you with pain, it will ferret away your memory and most annoyingly it starts off a stuck recording in your consciousness.

A day will come when the words “all or nothing” will plague you night and day, it’s the beginning of what I call ‘the knowing’.

These two words will never go away. They will pester you constantly, take over all of your waking hours, invade even your dreams… and they will only ever capitulate when you finally accept what lays ahead for you.

Be it do or die, only one or the other will shut it up.

As ever – my thoughts are always with you…

You can do more, flare up less and the world is not such a hostile place to be apart of.

All is going well – until?

One day you wake up and the reasons that initially drove you to stop drinking have started to fade away. Life is good, your starting to hurt less and the guilt that haunted you for so long, is starting to become a distant memory. Your confidence is growing and you begin to think you can handle anything, perhaps even a drink?

Its all to easy to be fooled into believing that we can cope, that just a few drinks with friends wont hurt and that The Next Day we could just start giving up again. What we forget in the joy of our new found freedom is, that perhaps we are only one drink away from slipping back into the nightmare again.

Being an alcoholic means that you have a vulnerability, not a weakness, just a physical part of you, that cannot drink alcohol in a controlled way. Over the years this vulnerability has eroded away your mental resistance, in the need to satisfy its craving.

Can you guarantee The Next Day will ever happen?

Tomorrow or The Next Day is not an option for us, we all know it will never come. For The Next Day will lead to The Next Day – to The Next Day – to The Next Day – ad infinitum (it will continue for ever!).

You are only one drink away from awakening the beast inside, are you certain you could lay it to rest again?

Least we forget?

Reminding yourself daily of what this vulnerability has done to you and remembering the reasons why you gave up, is key to staying sober. A few years back in my search to end my battle with the booze, I came across a simple method to re-enforce my will to succeed, and I would love to share it with you today.

In many rehab centres around the world, as part of coming to terms with the loss of alcohol from their lives, patients are asked to write a letter saying goodbye to alcohol. As daft as this may seem, its a fitting ending to what was once a love affair that went horribly wrong.

Saying goodbye to alcohol is like parting from a lover who has hurt you terribly, but with whom you are still very much in love. You know the relationship will never work, but you still crave their company and the parting is literally breaking your heart.

To write this letter draws the deepest feelings from you, it strips away the illusion of any good this infatuation has done to you, and plucks away at the raw nerves of what compelled you to get away. Its a constant reminder of the pain you felt at that time and it documents the reasons why you will never go back!

Write it today, pack it full of enough emotional power that it will jolt you back from going over the edge again, mail it to yourself and when you wake up one day and feel the need to find that lost love, open it and take in what that person is telling you in the letter.

Today you are a different person to the one who wrote that letter, not a super human, just one that realised what drinking alcohol did to you, one – that against the odds took the action needed to regain their life. The person you see in the mirror is still the same vulnerable human being – its just learnt to cope better in a frantic world full of temptation.

When ever you feel the need to drink take that letter out, read it, be grateful that you are still around to be able to, and realise just how far along you have come from that point.

The Next Day – never comes, there is only the here and now.

You have the choice to walk the path of sobriety or take the highway back to your own personal hell – that letter you write – send and receive – will be the safety net that catches you when you fall and it will be the greatest blessing that you will ever bestow on yourself.

Write it today!

As ever – my thoughts are always with you…

Sarah-Jayne