Don justified his drinking in college thinking he didn’t drink any more than his other buddies. But when Don graduated his drinking continued. As he kept connected with some of his old college friends he noticed that many of them discontinued drinking or drank less. Careers, marriage, and family life had replaced college drinking days…except for Don. He drank most days thinking that his drinking helped de-stress him from his demanding job and dysfunctional relationships with women. Basically Don didn’t grow up. He continued thinking, feeling, and acting like a twenty year old. Most of the time Don regarded his attitudes as youthful and cool. Life is for having as much a good time as possible, Don thought. He didn’t realize, however, that he wasn’t having a good time. He was medicating himself. In fact, he had been medicating himself with alcohol for years, since he started drinking. You see, Don had a conflicting relationship with his father. It started when he was a child. Don never felt good enough for his father. No matter how hard he tried it seemed he couldn’t get his father’s approval. At some point he gave up and that’s when drinking became his salvation. But Don’s salvation became his destroyer. By the time Don was thirty-seven he began to realize that his life wasn’t so great and that he needed to do something. That’s where I came into the picture. Now Don is working on himself and things are starting to change.
To learn more about addiction and alcoholism go to www.wendyhill.com. Wendy Hill, MA, PhD (2013) specializes in transforming subconscious self-defeating core beliefs.