Tony Bennett explained how one day he just decided to drop cocaine: ‘The manager of (comedian) Lenny Bruce told me he sinned against his talent with his drug habit. That sentence changed my life. I’ve been given this gift. I know how to sing and perform. I’m sinning against this gift and I thought, ‘I am not going to do that anymore’, and I just stopped. I had to, because I thought I was going to lose everything. It was said at the right moment, at the right time.”

Who Are Our Clients? We rarely take clients who are under 40 for various reasons we consider pertinent: We’re over 60 and the socio-cultural gap can be a problem; Most potential clients under 40 are too immature to benefit from our sophisticated approach; Most adults under 40 are insufficiently motivated; We like working with the clients who are most apt to benefit from our research based approach which most younger people aren’t ready for.

Most of us are confused by the difference between an urge to drink and the urge to maintain a habit pattern. That understandable error in thinking occurs because the pattern leads to drinking. A business newsletter I occasionally read noted recently that success and failure are both the results of following predictable habits. Good habits lead to success, bad ones to failure. The same is true of ending your alcohol abuse.

Good or Nice? Most of you who have been clients know this story and I hope you will bear with me as I run through it once again. Sometime in my late 20s I was sitting and complaining about my life to my Grandmother as she rocked and tended to her knitting. Eventually I ran out of breath and she stopped rocking, put her knitting in her lap, and looked at me over her half glasses.

It is always interesting when research which counters the disease model of alcoholism, or which suggests alternative models that are more in keeping with observation and experience, is suppressed. With that preamble, let’s revisit the work of psychologist Bruce K. Alexander at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Alexander had studied all of the research which said that rats who were isolated, constrained, and impaled with lab equipment, would consume morphine laced water in preference to plain water until they died of “addiction.”

There is no getting around the fact that alcohol is the very best anti-anxiety drug ever discovered. Given that it is also fast acting, cheap, legal, readily available, and socially promoted, well, what’s not to like about that? The main “what’s not to like?” is that, in the long run it not only prevents us from learning to cope with, and reduce, anxiety in better ways, it actually increases our anxiety as we worry more and more about the effects of excessive drinking. And the effects aren’t minor.

The quote is an early example of the necessity of being assertive – the most intractable problem most of our clients are medicating. No, it’s not the only one. There are the usual suspects as well: loneliness, boredom, depression, anxiety, hormone and medication imbalances, and a number of personal considerations as well. Yet the underlying condition which factors into nearly all of these is not some “disease” against which we are powerless and doomed, but rather an unwillingness to stand up for ourselves.

What About Spouses? Perspective clients often ask what role their spouses might play. We’re sure that you won’t be surprised to learn that, once again, we don’t work like anyone else. First, what’s the usual role rehab assigns to spouses (and/or other family)? It’s usually called family day(s) or some variation, and it generally involves [...]

Why would you decide to work with us rather than with one of the thousands of other possibilities available to you? It’s a good question and one that you would be well advised to consider carefully. After all, success will require that you invest a fair amount of time, energy, emotion and, yes, money. Consequently, [...]

Shall We Dance? Analogies can help us better understand the dynamics of our various relationships. We like “the dance” as a way of examining both your relationship with alcohol and also with those around you. Fundamentally, all of our relationships, personal, professional, familial, social, and so on, develop into a “dance” of predictable “steps.” These [...]