How to Quit Drinking, and other Bad Things

Monday, May 08, 2006(Original Post)

How to Quit Drinking, and other Bad Things

As I noted in my previous blog, I have an addictive personality.  One of my nasty addictions was to alcohol.  A less self-destructive addiction was my photography jones.  As I said in my previous blog, my wife had put me on a budget and in order to have enough money to satisfy my photography jones, I would have to quit drinking.  Besides it is a horrible addiction.
At the time, I drank something on the order of 12 beers a day, starting after I returned from the university unless I had to prepare for the next day’s classes or write a paper or whatever.  In those circumstances I took it more slowly.
I began my drinking in college and by the time I was in graduate school the problem had gotten so bad I phoned a professor late one night to tell him I was drunk and needed help.  He sent me to a shrink and things got better.  However, the drinking continued on into my professional years.  In Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, a large number of young profs and graduate students went to the Capital bar most nights.  There was nothing else to do.  We had some great times.  Every Friday and Saturday night, someone would agree to host a post-Capitol party and the owner of the bar would announce the location and what that night’s carry out special was.  I was also caught up in the Anti-War effort and that, fortunately, didn’t involve drinking but it did involve pot.  I did slow up both activities after I met my wife.  Actually, she was someone else’s wife but became mine.
I then went on to Ohio State as a department chair.  They were desperate because no one wanted the job.  I was desperate because my wife wanted to quit her job and I needed to make up part of the loss in income.  The net result was that I had become a role model of sorts.  One can’t be a chair, not publish, and punish people who don’t publish by not giving them raises but I did just that.  I fell apart, suffering a mental breakdown and then a bout of depression.  The university took care of me and I returned in good health.
However, I had to become productive.  I made a key step.  I decided that I could not be the kind of linguist I was expected to be.  I thought theoretical syntax had become a virtually unempirical field and, in any event, I decided I was much more interested in how language was used in the real world.  So, I decided to write a book on the language of television advertising.  It wasn’t what my colleagues expected or wanted but I had decided to start pleasing myself not others.
We happened to own a cottage on a little lake south of where we live and I decided to go there and write, or, at least, try to write this book.  I got nowhere for the first week, though I did drink my 12 beers a day, and then one night, Bob Trumpy, a former Cincy Bengals football player who had a night time talk show, brought in an expert on alcoholism to chat with.  This was prompted by a pro football player being caught with drugs and Trumpy wanted to talk about that but couldn’t find a drug counselor.  This alcoholism expert said one killer thing—you know you are an alcoholic when you plan out your day so that it includes time for drinking.  In my case, the planning lay in making sure I passed by a place that sold beer on the way home from the university.  Somehow, that realization, added to some major embarrassment in my professional life due to my drinking pushed me over the edge.  I had to quit.
If you read my previous blog, How to Quit Smoking, you know that I have a three step program for quitting bad habits and I followed that.

1.  Prepare to quit.If you drink too much, especially if you are addicted or habituated to drinking, and you have gotten over your ability to deny that you have a problem, then the odds are you want to quit.  That is crucial.  If you don’t want to quit, don’t bother trying.  Alcohol will destroy your life if you are an alcoholic of one sort or another.  Drinking does not solve problems.  If it did, doctors would prescribe it.  Drinking causes problems.
2.  Rethinking what quitting means.As I noted in the previous blog, we are no good at self-deprivation.  To quit drinking, one has to see something positive coming out of it.  You will save a lot of money.  You may be able to save your marriage or keep your job.  I can’t say what your reward will be but that is what must be in your mind when you quit—what you are getting, not what you are giving up.  One thing I feared was that I would have no fun at parties.  Forget it.  You will have just as much fun as you did when you drank except that you will find the drunks pretty tiresome.  Two buddies and I dropped some acid in the late ‘60’s and went to one of those after-the-Capital parties.  No one noticed that we were stoned but we were astonished at how many couples were fighting with each other.  Who would have known—acid trips were less destructive than getting drunk.  Not that I am recommending you drop some acid.
3. Rethinking who you are after you quit. Obviously, the moment you quit, you have to think of yourself as a non-drinker, not an ex-drinker.  This bit of self-deception can work though I think some will have more problems with it than I did.

There existed a drug back in the day which would make you quite ill if you drank after taking it.  Now that I think about it, it is hard to imagine doctors actually prescribing such a thing but my doctor did.  At the time I quit, I had some pills left over from a failed effort.  So, I started taking them.  Some six or seven days later, I discovered that I hadn’t been taking the pills for a couple of days.  I had kicked my drinking habit.
Despite the many years I drank, it seems I never became chemically dependent.  If I had, I think it would have been much harder.  I might have had to go to some detox program or join AA or whatever.  AA doesn’t like people like me.  They call us “dry drunks.” Well, I have been a dry drunk for about 30 years or so, and can testify that it is not a bad way to be.  For those who are addicted rather than psychologically habituated to booze, I wish you luck.  My three step plan will work, but it will take hard work to make it work for you.

How to Quit Smoking

Tuesday, May 02, 2006 (Original Post)

How to Quit Smoking

I have an addictive personality.  No doubt about that.  When I quit drinking, I figured I might lose some weight.  I didn’t.  I switched to ice cream.  Right away I realized I was a carbohydrate junkie.
Many years ago, I was a heavy smoker and a heavy drinker and I had a photography jones.  That makes three addictions since I was accurately diagnosed by a colleague as being a serial hobbyist.  My wife, who was none too pleased with me on various grounds was especially displeased that I was spending much more of our joint income than was responsible.  I was also spending more than she was.  So, she put me on a $200 per month money diet.  That was some 25 or more years ago so it wasn’t chump change but it wasn’t enough to support all three addictions.
Clearly, I could not satisfy both of my harmful addictions and my photography jones at the same time so I decided to quite one of them.  I had been de-escalating the concentration of nicotine per cigarette for some years and felt that it would be easier to quit smoking than drinking.
There were three key factors that made my quitting cigarettes a success.

1.  Prepare to quit. Many years before I quit a friend told me how he quit.  He had a rough final semester of undergraduate school and decided that while he was determined to quit, he wouldn’t do so until the semester was over.  By the time the semester ended he was comfortable with quitting.  I had developed a strong disdain for my dependance on cigarettes.  Anyone who has scrounged around for stubs to smoke or gone out in the middle of the night to make sure there was something to smoke the next morning will know what I mean.  I didn’t know yet that like all other smokers I was a very stinky person.  All smokers reek of smoking.  That is one of the reason why in personals one sees “Black professional 30-year old woman wants nonsmoker who likes taking walks, snuggling, and watching football.”
2.  Rethinking what quitting means. We humans are very bad at self-deprivation.  Most of us operate according to the rule: “I see, I want, I take.” So, in order to quit successfully, it is necessary to rethink what it means.  One has to see it as providing you with some reward.  It might be that you could save up enough money in six months to take a nice trip.  Or, as in my case, I had more money available to satisfy my photography jones. It might even because you have a small child and don’t want him or her to suffer from your second hand smoke.  Another motivation that you may not know of is that if you are a smoker you stink and for that reason and for the reason that many people don’t like to be around smokers, you will increase the number of people in your life—the number of women you can date, for instance.  Back when I last looked some 10-12 years ago, personals went like this:  “Black female in her 30’s looking for a romantic nonsmoker who loves ...”
3.  Rethinking who you are after you quit. At the moment you quit, you must see your self, not as an ex-smoker but as a non-smoker.  Ex-smokers always start smoking again.  So when a craving for a cigarette comes over you, you reply to yourself:  “Dolt, you can’t be wanting a cigarette.  You don’t smoke.” Believe it or not, if you have gone through Steps 1 and 2, this exercise in self-deception will be more effective than you think.

So, I quit.  I won’t say it was easy, but it wasn’t very hard.  I know nothing about all the aids available to help you quit smoking—the patches, for instance.  There was a nicotine gum out when I quit but it did nothing for me.  After all, I was a nonsmoker so why would I use a gum that had nicotine.