Pour yourself a generous measure of neat spirit. Before you drink it, take time out to close your eyes and make a solemn vow that it will be your last ever alcoholic drink. Concentrate on the foul taste, and ponder on how you were once conned into paying a fortune just to pour that filthy poison down your throat.

Part of the ingenuity of any addictive drug is to fool you into believing that life without it won’t be as enjoyable, and/or that you’ll be less able to cope with stress.

as your body becomes immune to alcohol, you’ll need to take larger doses to reach the same level of inebriation. This tends to happen so gradually that you are hardly aware it is happening. And because you take more and more, your problems – mental, physical and financial – get worse and worse. Again, this tends to happen relatively slowly, so that

I like to exercise daily, not because I’ve quit drinking, but for the purely selfish reason that all aspects of life are so much more enjoyable when you feel fit and healthy.

One thing we have established is that whether they are youngsters just starting out, normal drinkers, or alcoholics, people do not drink alcohol because it tastes good.

What you really enjoy in an alcoholic drink is not the drink itself, but the ending of the irritation of wanting that drink. Non-drinkers enjoy that all the time.

I can remember this fear about never being able to drink again turning into the joy of never having to drink again.

With alcohol, there is no physical withdrawal pain from the drug itself. However, drinking alcohol does cause several undesirable physical effects. We have already addressed inebriation and dehydration,

The more you concentrate on the reasons you shouldn’t drink, the more deprived and miserable you will feel during the periods when you aren’t drinking: the forbidden fruit effect, and the more stupid you will feel when you do drink: the guilt effect.