The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Why don’t you stop drinking? Anybody can be a drunk. Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. Takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.

Do you ever feel guilty about your drinking in your private moments alone, even if you tell everyone, "Oh, I can hold my alcohol"? Do you feel guilty? Or are you friends with someone who’s an alcoholic, and they won’t even address it, and maybe they’re feeling hopeless, and you’re feeling hopeless?

Joining us today is a nationally known, award-winning health and medical journalist and a best-selling author, Ann Fletcher, and her book Sober for Good. And let me give you the subtitle: New Solutions for Drinking Problems, Advice from Those Who Have Succeeded. Her book may give even the most depressed alcohol-troubled person some hope and some real-life skills to help them kick the habit. Welcome, Ann, I’m delighted to have you on the show.

It’s great to be with you.

Tell me your approach to studying alcoholics, alcohol-troubled people.

Well, I go out and find success stories. I had used a model like that to study people who had successfully lost weight and kept it off, and found hundreds of them and looked for the common threads. I did that in my Thin for Life book series, and I used that same model to go out and find and talk to and survey hundreds of people who had overcome drinking problems, but they’ve done it in many different ways. I found more than 200 people, 222 to be exact.

Good ages, were they?

Pardon me, what ages?

Different ages. They were people ranging from their early 20s up into their 60s, 70s, and I think I even had a few in their 80s, but they had to have had at least five years of sobriety to be in the book. The average length of sobriety for all 222 people was 13 years. So there were people with a lot of long-term sobriety.

And, you know, I mentioned to my husband that I had heard you speak recently, and you mentioned that some people would drink up to a fifth a day, and he says, "You’re crazy, they’d be dead if they drank a fifth a day."

There are lots of people who drink up to a fifth a day, which would be equal to 17 drinks. I had more than 90 people in Sober for Good who drank that much. But, you know, we have this stereotype in our mind often of what an alcoholic is: it’s that hardcore, down-and-out drunk in the gutter kind of picture. The person who is drinking that much… actually, I had people who were very high-functioning, who carried on their jobs just fine the whole time they were drinking that because their tolerance was very high, and they were able to function. But the point I wanted to make is that there is a large spectrum of drinking problems. Not everybody with a drinking problem is a stereotypical alcoholic falling down because of their drinking. And I have people in the book who never drank more than three to five drinks a day, all the way up to one gentleman who drank two quarts of hard liquor a day. I wanted to represent this big spectrum of drinking problems that are out there.

That’s shocking, when you think of someone drinking two quarts a day and then becoming sober for at least five years. You say the average length was 13 years. Tell me, what type of skills would a person like that use?

Hey, I gotta interrupt this, because we’ve got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Ann will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where’s that ad I saw? Ah, here it is: The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at Amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance—that is interesting.

Tell me, what type of skills would a person like that use?

Well, you know, there’s not just one answer or one skill. There are lots of different ways that people went about this. One of the things that I did was I wanted to find some common threads, whether or not people had quit drinking on their own or whether they had gone to Alcoholics Anonymous or gone to some alternative recovery group. I should say that more than 90 people in the book did recover with the help of a 12-step program, but there were 125 people who did it in different ways. Some quit drinking on their own, some with the support of a friend, and others went to groups that many people may not have heard of. Programs like SMART Recovery, Women for Sobriety, Rational Recovery, and SOS (Secular Organizations for Sobriety). I wanted to increase awareness of these programs and show the many different approaches people used for overcoming their drinking problem.

That was one of the things that struck me when I went to your workshop and read your book, and your book’s also on audio tape—Sober for Good—and I’m talking with Ann Fletcher. What struck me was that people recovered through many different methods, some on their own, others with a friend, and others through various groups. But it wasn’t just AA.

That’s right. In our society, we’re often led to believe that there’s only one way to overcome a drinking problem, and that’s with AA. AA is a wonderful program, and it has helped countless people, but it doesn’t work for everybody. I heard from many people who said they weren’t able to overcome their drinking problem until they found an alternative to AA because they didn’t connect with its philosophy.

Now, you’re a success story yourself.

Well, I guess you could call me that. Yes, I am. I have to tell you that when the book was about to come out, I really didn’t want to tell my story for all the reasons that other people don’t want to admit they had a drinking problem: the stereotypes, the stigma. But I’m glad I did in the book’s introduction, because I wanted to convey that you don’t have to be at rock bottom to recognize a drinking problem. I was on the less severe end of the spectrum and saw my life improve after stopping drinking. That’s one of the important messages of Sober for Good: you can address a drinking problem before it gets severe.

What struck me about you is that most people would think, well, Ann has a drinking problem, so her parents were probably alcoholics. But I think of raising my own two children, and my husband and I don’t drink. When I heard your story, I thought, "Oh my God, that could happen to my kids."

Yes, I came from a teetotalling family. For moralistic reasons, drinking was discouraged, which made it more tempting for me as a rebellious teenager. And I wasn’t one of those people who loved alcohol right away; I had to cultivate a taste for it. Over the years, my drinking increased gradually, becoming a daily habit. Although I never lost my job or faced extreme consequences, I noticed it made me depressed and forgetful. After many years, I realized I was a happier person without alcohol. But this book isn’t about me. I wanted to share the many ways people have overcome drinking issues so readers could find what works for them.

With a variety of solutions. In the last few seconds, what was the most surprising finding?

There were lots of surprises, but one of the biggest was how important exercise was for recovery. I’m a registered dietitian, so I know wellness is important, but I didn’t expect exercise to be the second-most popular way people found pleasure after quitting drinking.

Thank you so much for joining us today. The book is Sober for Good, and the author is Ann Fletcher. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, visit DrKenner.com.

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner:

A romance killer is the joy killer of living in fear or with chronic anxiety. Say you were profoundly hurt by a failed love relationship and vowed, "I’ll never let anyone get that close to me again. The pain is too great." You may have falsely concluded that suffering is the essence of life. But by withdrawing from life and living in fear of rejection, you lower the risk of hurt but pay a terrible price. Living means pursuing values. Take small steps toward what you want.

You can download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.