I haven’t drank alcohol for 8 years. I got a DUI one night and never drank again. My husband has a different alcohol addiction. Either way alcohol was ruining our lives and we both have been sober 8 years. Both our experiences and methods different, one rehab one outpatient treatment.

We have family who are addicted to alcohol and we are watching it ruin their lives and this book was suggested to us so I decided to read it before giving it to a family member and I really appreciate the book. I highlighted main points and also threw in credible resources so he has them for alcohol withdrawal and so he can stop drinking safely.

“It’s not the people that are weak, it’s our society that is weak to letting go of alcohol.”

Another book to help me dive into the mind of addicts, growing my social work knowledge. Growing up with this issue in my household & realizing how normalized this global issue is, I feel that it’s important to read the raw truths that most choose to ignore.

I chose this book after hearing Nikki Glaser speak about it & her journey to living a sober, happy life. I laughed at the choice, at first, but truly enjoyed the information & encouragement to just be better; you can be the outcast and the happy sober one in the room & be confident about it.

2. Yep, I read it twice. I need repetition.

1. This book was referenced in Holly Whitaker's Quit like a Woman so I picked it up. Carr's fundamentally different approach to quitting alcohol is sublime and liberating. Of course, it's repetitive and pragmatic. Carr's method aims to undo years of brainwashing and has proven to be very successful.

You don't have to want to quit to read this book, and you have everything to gain from reading it. Take what works for you and use it to your advantage, whenever you need it.

Undeniably, alcohol is an insidious drug, an adroit killer.

This method is different and it works

I would recommend this book to you if you think you need alcohol to relax and to be happy. It addresses every excuse a drinker has to continue poisoning themselves.

Once the drinker recognizes that his drinking is causing him a problem, he has not one new problem but two. When he is drinking he feels guilty and miserable, and when he is not drinking he feels deprived and miserable. I call this the “critical point” because at the same time he is drinking too much, he can’t get enough to drink.<<..>>
Just as the more the fly struggles the more trapped it becomes, so the more the alcoholic tries to exercise control the more precious the pleasure and crutch appear to him, so the more dependent he feels. In order to control his intake, he has to exercise willpower and discipline. No matter how strong-willed he is, eventually he finds himself drinking more than he did before he decided to cut down. After several failed attempts to cut down, the alcoholic comes to the conclusion that the only solution is to quit completely.
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Normally inhibited people don’t become more interesting when they are inebriated; on the contrary they become overemotional, repetitive, incoherent, and boring. It wouldn’t be so bad if the inhibited person felt better for it, but they don’t; they are in a stupor and you cannot appreciate a situation unless you have your senses to appreciate it with. - I disagree with that I'm afraid. I have a close acquaintance in fact, with whom we used to get along with just fine, until she gave up drinking completely after her pregnancy 8 years ago. Well, suffice it to say, both me and my husband, as well as her bridesmaid, happen to agree that she was much more interesting before she stopped drinking, as she's lost all her fun and became very uptight and boring since then.
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I'm having issues with his reasoning unfortunately :( He's comparing sober people, to people completely drunk, those who have no recollection the next day what they said or did instead of merely inebriated. Thus, his arguments are not convincing me at all, as he's referring 99% of the time to people who drink themselves into a stupor almost daily, not people who overindulge, which is what I'm interested at. Disappointing in general, even if there were a few good points in the beginning.

I decided to read this book after listening to the Easyway to Control Alcohol audiobook. This book was written by an old white man and it is clear. It comes from a very privileged perspective. One analogy he made several times was that criminals reoffend because they are comfortable in jail. The book had no references. For instance, many studies have been done on the fact that while many feel alcohol to be relaxing the physiological response to alcohol is not relaxing. All that being said, I really liked the idea of this book. I read The 30-Day Sobriety Solution and it was like a second job for a month with all of the extra assignments and journaling you needed to do with this book. Easyway is indeed easy and despite my annoyances with the author, it resonated with me. Annie Grace wrote This Naked Mind after quitting drinking using Easyway. While I haven't read her book yet, I have listened to her podcast and feel like This Naked Mind might be all the good stuff from Easyway without the old white man vibe.

Getwijfeld tussen 1 en 2 sterren. Slecht geschreven. Slechte lay-out. Veel herhaling. Veel verhaaltjes. Weinig goeie tips of uitleg over dingen waar je tegenaan kan lopen en wat daar dan aan te doen. Ik had er meer van verwacht.

Very good book. Reframing alcohol as a poison essentially. I agree with most of his points and generally see alcohol as a scourge for me personally. It's highly addictive nature snuck up on me. I am implementing his strategies now. It has also inspired me to find similar books, like The Naked Mind

This book has some points that definitely helped with my own understanding of why people might drink or why they “think” they drink alcohol, and there are a few quotes that may be helpful in getting sober - but most of the points made are sweeping generalizations that don’t touch the complexity of human beings and why they use alcohol. You can’t read this book and think it applies to the whole world - or even to yourself. Reading this while being extremely critical might be the only way you can use it to your advantage while trying to quit or slow down alcohol consumption. A lot of what I got from the book was that the author doesn’t believe in addiction or withdrawal, which in my opinion is inappropriate for a book about quitting one of the most widely used addictive substances in the world (a substance that causes withdrawal symptoms sometimes leading to death). The lack of acknowledgment on withdrawal feels like the author is not taking alcoholism or addiction seriously. I would not recommend this book to someone who is seriously trying to quit alcohol; instead, maybe a couple of select quotes from the book.

Changer my view of drinking

I always believer I HAD to drink. Dinner out? Have to drink. Party? Drink. Celebration? Drink. Seeing friends? Drink. I don't drink everyday, in fact I'll drink only a few times month. But the point is, I drank because I felt like that us what I was SUPPOSED to so. Allen Carr's Easyway has helped me realize i don't ever have to drink again if I don't want to, and what's more, if I never have a drink again my life will be perfectly fine. In fact it will be better! I feel free from an illusion that everyone seems to believe. If you want to stop or even cut back on drinking I highly recommend this book. Honestly the next time you're given a drink, you most likely wollnt want it after reading this.

I was already aware of the mind game Allen Carr plays with you, but it was interesting to see it in use. I paid attention to every time the phrase "your last drink" came up, which started happening with more and more frequency as the book went on, until suddenly it is time for Your Last Drink. I had my last drink months ago, so I didn't do the ritual, but I have a similar Important Moment that I recognize as Kaila's Last Night of Drinking. If I ever drank again, that event would be ruined, and there is some poetic justice to it that I won't bore you with now but it involves a large group of friends deciding I was no longer a friend because I stopped drinking. They of course would not tell you that, it's for a hundred other reasons, but it was definitely because I stopped drinking.

Not that I'm still bitter about it.

It was nice to further cement the importance of that night. It was My Last Night of Drinking, and can be cherished as such.

A little too simplistic and reductive for a huge, potentially scary topic.