For many of us it is Christmas, and for all of us we hope it is a season for joy, reflection, rest, contentment, love and caring. To that end, we offer, instead of our usual essays, the following:

Informed Decision Making 2017 is just around the corner and while I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, I do lay out some goals I’d like to aim for by my birthday in May. That’s my idiosyncratic way of organizing my year’s beginnings.

eprogramming If you are going to leave your alcohol abuse behind, then you will find it helpful to leave all of the 12 Step mythology behind – including the unconscious beliefs you have accumulated. Over the past 75 years our culture has become saturated by ideas that have no foundation in research or experience. But driven by rehab mills' marketing hype they have nonetheless wormed their way into most of our psyches.

Lonely? Last week’s Newsletter focused on “unbalanced” relationships and the way in which assertiveness training can help to address this underlying problem. This week I’d like to drill down to another level – why do we allow unbalanced relationships to develop, continue, and why do we keep going back to them?

Here Between the Holidays… Thanksgiving is over, even if the left-overs aren’t, and Christmas, New Year’s and other assorted holidays and celebrations loom – many of them riddled with alcohol and the ghosts of too many Christmases past, to paraphrase Dickens. Was Thanksgiving a reminder of how bad a holiday can be? Or an introduction to how different, and enjoyable, a gathering unmarred by alcohol abuse can be?

Quantity or Quality? Most of us don’t take enough time to sort out what people, activities, and engagements actually enhance our lives and which either just occupy space or actually detract from our “quality of life.” We tend to equate busy with productive and occupied with positive.

Now What? Halloween and the election are over and many of us had some trouble determining where when left off and the other began. But, be that as it may, we’re all still stuck with our own lives and problems and rewards. And, Yes, we all still have our own small spheres of influence just as we did before the election. And will after the next.

In 72 Hours the Election Will be Over. Time For a New Excuse to Keep on Drinking? Or is the Pain of Staying the Same Finally Offsetting the Fear of Changing. That is the formula that most of us adhere to most of the time – can I endure this pain rather than face the effort and unknown consequences of change? Or, to put it another way, am I ready to trade the security of familiar miseries for the possibility of a happier life?

Halloween? Remember when Halloween was a children’s holiday rather than a day (or, this year, a four-day weekend, unfortunately) for “adults” to engage in childish, drunken excess that exceeds even Super Bowl Sunday? Unhappily, Halloween also kicks off the season of excess that will run at least until the Super Bowl. Why? That’s a really good question that most of us, during our drinking years, are pretty careful to avoid answering. We excuse ourselves with the lie that “it’s what everyone does.”

Thanks to all of you who wrote expressing your condolences on the death of my beloved dog Sophie. It’s much appreciated. Losses, of course, remind us that nothing is permanent. Indeed, we no sooner seem to get our lives into some sort of equilibrium when another event blindsides us. It’s never really surprising that many of us “drown our sorrows” or seek alcoholic oblivion’s temporary relief.