A Better List for Staying Sober Through the Holidays

First things first: I would love to credit the originator of this fabulous alternative holiday list. It arrived in my inbox, on Facebook, and via Twitter, today with several different attributions. If you know who created this powerful item, please comment so we can all thank him or her.

As we Lose The Booze team members work our way through this busy season, with all of the joys, stresses, messes, and opportunities it brings, this list is up on our wall.

Be
Hug
Peace
Donate
Love
and Be.

May your decision to Lose The Booze be freeing and joyful for you, this season. May, Staying Sober Through the Holidays,  only add to your blessings.

Take care of yourself. Walk the dog. Eat. Rest. Do what is fun and fulfilling.

Another good reason...to Enjoy a Sober Season

The first of the annual, How Not to ruin your career by getting hammered at the company party, stories has hit the wire services. NPR has this week's winner, mischief-under-the-mistletoe-office-partygoers-behaving-badly

If you're a Lose the Booze reader you know that Margaret Gold provides all sorts of great tips and strategies on how not to humiliate yourself at a work or family holiday event.

Whether you are getting sober, moderating carefully, or are a long-time sober person facing the annual stress marathon of holiday events, here are a few good tips to help you stay sober through the holidays:

• Have an appropriate non-alcoholic beverage in your hand at all times, if you are in a must-attend, drinking business or social situation. 
• Ask for non-alcoholic drinks, soda water, etc. to be served in a real glass, with a twist of lemon or lime. Stemware, a highball glass, or whatever everyone else at the event is drinking from, no straw please, will minimize the number of questions or pressure you’ll likely receive from others about your beverage choice, at the event. 
• Insist with staff if necessary – there’s nothing more conspicuous than Coke in a plastic cup at an open bar event. If they tell you that they’ll have to charge you for your soda water or Sprite as if it were a vodka tonic, reflect for .7 seconds on how much booze has cost you, at similar events, over the years, and pay up. 
• Plan an escape if the temptation gets too great.

For many, many more detailed strategies, scripts, trigger management techniques, and support for the choices you are making about drinking this season, please consider looking at Staying Sober Through the Holidays, Margaret Gold's new book for sober people who want to remain that way through Valentines Day and beyond. 

If you are still looking at whether it might be time to Lose the Booze, start here.

It's After Thanksgiving and Someone wants to Know How to Stop Drinking...Without AA meetings

It's Black Friday and I have multiple emails asking how to stop drinking without AA.

I am so glad you asked. "Lose The Booze, " is Margaret Gold's book that describes not just how to quit drinking without AA meetings but also provides the research behind why you should quit drinking some other way than by running to your nearest church basement for guilt and shame hour.

If you are shopping for sobriety rather than a GameBoy47, we suggest getting some up to date, research based information on what works and what, like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) does not, for most people.

You may find that losing the booze is as simple as identifying your problem drinking behaviors, going over some strategies, provided in the book, and moving forward. You may also find that you need more help, more tips, and more ideas for how to support your decision to quit drinking. AA doesn't work for many people and we'll bet that many of you reading this have already done 90 in 90 and listened to drunk-a-logs at meetings.

We're not against trying AA to quit drinking except that the research backed information says your chances of success stink. And, we completely disagree with the belief that you are some flawed creature fully defective, who needs to be accountable to a group and sponsor who aren't likely to stay sober, longterm, themselves.

So, quit drinking. Stop the madness. Read the "Lose The booze" book and start living your best sober life.

Giving Thanks and Offering Sober Holiday Options

As I write this, it is Thanksgiving Eve. Hopefully every shop has been shopped, every platter located, and the roaster unearthed. As you decide whether to skip the marshmallows on this year's yams and consider whether there are enough vegetarian or gluten free options on your menu, please pause and consider this:

Do you have tasty, non-alcoholic drink choices available for all  of your guests?

Whether sparkling water or sodas, juices, or good old-fashioned root beer, please serve up a selection, in the same nice glasses you would use for great wine or bourbon.

This does not require you to spend one minute considering who drinks (alcohol) and who doesn't. We all will drink something tomorrow.

And a fair number of your guests may also drive somewhere. Be it home, or to the earliest shopping emporium to offer great deals, that drive shouldn't happen with evening one drink for the person behind the wheel.

So as you finish setting the table, or even deciding what to take along to the hostess of your Thanksgiving feast, please be thankful for the gift of too many choices. And help everyone arrive home healthy and alive.

"Staying Sober Through the Holidays" is Margaret Gold's new book. We are thankful that the paperback edition came out today, in time for Thanksgiving.

It's full of great ideas for alcohol-free, and optional, entertaining. Whether you are lucky enough to be a moderate drinker, longtime sober, or simply a thoughtful host, the book has many strategies for staying sober, and supporting your sober friends and family, during this often stressful time of year.

Happy Thanksgiving. From the Lose The Booze Team.

Staying Sober Through the Holidays - Now in Kindle

We are so proud and pleased to announce that the author of the Amazon bestseller 'Lose The Booze', Margaret Gold, has just released a new book to help former drinkers stay sober through the holiday season.

Staying Sober Through the Holidays  is designed to help people keep their commitment to staying alcohol-free during the holidays without guilt, shame, or hanging around at meetings in church basements.

Congratulations to Margaret Gold and her editors for adding an important voice to the self-help and recovery communities.

Please take a look. New posts, press, and more links soon.

Lose the Booze 2nd Edition out in Paperback and on Kindle

Lose The Booze has been updated. The second edition of Lose the Booze - The No Meetings Guide to Clearing up your Drinking Problem for Good is available now on Kindle and in paperback.

Plenty of people have emailed and written to ask for non-12-step rehab options. and the new second edition features a selection of non-12-step rehab and outpatient choices for people who may want more support, as they choose to moderate, or end their drinking.

It's really exciting to see people responding so positively to Margaret Gold's book and positive message that no-one needs meetings to get and stay sober.

We're proud to publish Margaret's work and are really excited about her plans for even more non-12 step resources including international options and links to SMART and other non-step rehab and support systems.

A learned scholar makes a large number of AA members unhappy on NPR

It was interesting to see how defensive and AA -or-no-way, the comment thread has trended on an author interview piece on NPR.org.

Dr. Dodes has written a well researched volume that debunks 12 step recovery for the masses. He is particularly concerned about courts and other similar authoritative institutions prescribing AA.

Dr. Dodes is not the first, and hopefully won't be the last to say out loud what many sober people, myself included, have found true in our own lives: AA didn't work for us and we got sober anyway. AA can be very harmful, particularly to women with abusive pasts, and for people with various other profiles incompatible with AA nostrums.

 It was also intriguing that several male contributors to the comment thread were immediately hostile and threatened by the simple statement of, by now established fact, that AA can be particularly ineffective and sometimes dangerous to women with an abusive past.

My recently published book, "Lose The Booze", on Kindle, while nothing like the beautifully researched volume Dr. Dodes has put forth, offers my experience, suggestions for taking back your power, and a brief discussion of the many research studies that do not back up AA claims to success. It offers specific action plans and tips in a little book free of guilt, rather than a Big Book full of antiquated ideas about character and culture.
I applaud Dr. Dodes for taking the high road in describing the type of drinker that may very well benefit from the camaraderie offered by AA, and to reveal that most of us with a serious problem with alcohol, may very well be harmed by the program. It is also a real pleasure, and one that the AA driven comments, here, don't seem to like much, to see an accomplished scholar lend credence to the fact that most of us can and will stop using the substance that is harming us. We are not powerless. We are not flawed. We are the silent majority that found the 12 step method not a fit for our beliefs or circumstances.


http://www.npr.org/2014/03/23/291405829/with-sobering-science-doctor-debunks-12-step-recovery

New Book Teaches Readers How to Stop Drinking Without the Guilt or the Ordeal of a 12 Step Program

"Lose The Booze: the no-meetings guide to clearing up your drinking problem, for good" is available right now on Amazon’s Kindle platform. How does a smart, Fortune 500 company exec deal with a daily alcohol habit? Not too well. For Margaret Gold, a wife, mother of three kids and successful career woman in sales and marketing, alcohol had become a hindrance to her life, goals and self esteem. 

Regular alcohol intake has become a social disease of the 21st century, and Gold’s plan is for the 21st century. She doesn’t advocate the traditional guilt-ridden 12 step programs held in church basements. This isn’t a book for the powerless. Margaret is adamant that the methods she discovered and uses herself will help people reclaim their own lives.

Diet, exercise and how to deal with social triggers form part of the “Lose The Booze” program. Initial reviews are excellent: readers are happy that the book does not advocate a one size fits all methodology. Reviewers have pointed out that scientific analysis of the problem which Gold uses in her book is a more readily internalized process than traditional methods of willpower on its own.

The book is well written, in an informal style that doesn’t preach to its readers. Readers who feel they need some help with their alcohol intake, or who have family members in that position are encouraged to be proactive and follow the scientific program Gold has used to go from drinking on a daily basis to not having had a drink in over ten years.

“Lose The Booze: the no-meetings guide to clearing up your drinking problem, for good” is available now from Amazon. The Kindle-only distribution is set to expand and we can expect to hear more from Margaret Gold soon. The companion volume, "Staying Sober: Tips for Professional Road Warriors" is expected to arrive in bookstores and on Kindle later this Spring.






Northstar Ink is an independent publishing company known for offering an eclectic range of memoir, empowered self-help, non-fiction, business & marketing guides, and even the occasional quirky fiction volume. Northstar has expanded into the burgeoning e-book and Kindle market and has ambitious plans to add about forty books to the company catalog during 2014.  Northstar Ink may have joined the Kindle age but still judges titles by whether a good independent bookstore would put the new Northstar title on an end cap.