The 30-Day Sobriety Solution: How to Cut Back or Quit Drinking in the Privacy of Your Own Home - Softcover

Jack Canfield is co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, which includes forty New York Times bestsellers, and coauthor of The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. He is a leader in the field of personal transformation and peak performance and is currently CEO of the Canfield Training Group and Founder and Chairman of the Board of The Foundation for Self-Esteem. An internationally renowned corporate trainer and keynote speaker, he lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Dave Andrews has been a featured “sobriety expert” on more than fifty national and international talk shows. As “America’s #1 Sobriety Coach,” he is the leading expert in helping others recover, reclaim, and reinvent their lives without alcohol, and serves on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit organizations Young People in Recovery and Advocates for Recovery. CEO of The 30-Day Solution, LLC, he resides outside Denver, Colorado, with his family, and has been sober for over eight years.

The 30-Day Sobriety Solution Day 1

The 100% Solution

Building Your Foundation for Thriving in Sobriety

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just the first step.1

—DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. (1929–1968)

Clergyman and civil rights leader

As the above quotation from Martin Luther King Jr. says, all you have to do is take the first step. And congratulations—you have already taken the first step by picking up this book and starting to read it. Don’t worry about how far you have to go or what you have to do. You have just opened the door to a life full of unlimited potential and possibility, and we invite you to walk through that door with us now.
The Golden Buddha

We would like to start by having you read this story by Jack that appeared in the first Chicken Soup for the Soul2 book:

In the fall of 1988, my wife and I were invited to give a presentation on self-esteem and peak performance at a conference in Hong Kong. Since we had never been to Asia, we decided to extend our trip and visit Thailand.

When we arrived in Bangkok, we decided to take a tour of the city’s most famous Buddhist temples. Along with our interpreter and driver, my wife and I visited numerous Buddhist temples that day, but after a while, they began to blur in our memory.

However, one temple left an indelible impression in our hearts and minds. It is called the Temple of the Golden Buddha. The temple itself is very small, probably no larger than thirty feet by thirty feet. However, as we entered, we were stunned by the presence of a ten-and-a-half-foot-tall solid gold Buddha. The statue weighs more than two and a half tons and is valued at approximately $196 million. It was an awesome sight—the kindly and gentle yet imposing solid gold Buddha smiling down at us.

As we immersed ourselves in normal sightseeing tasks (taking pictures while oohing and ahhing over the statue), I walked over to a glass case that contained a large piece of clay about eight inches thick and twelve inches wide. Next to the glass case was a typewritten page describing the history of this magnificent piece of art.

Back in 1957, a group of monks from a monastery had to relocate a large clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. The monastery was to be relocated to make room for the development of a highway through Bangkok. When the crane began to lift the giant statue, the weight of it was so tremendous that it began to crack. Rain also began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about possible damage to the sacred Buddha, decided to lower the statue back to the ground and cover it with a large canvas tarp to protect it from the rain.

Later that evening, the head monk went to check on the Buddha. He shined his flashlight under the tarp to see if the Buddha was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, he noticed a little gleam of light shining back and found that strange. As he took a closer look at this gleam of light, he wondered if something was underneath the clay. He fetched a chisel and hammer from the monastery and began to chip away at the clay. As he knocked off shards of clay, the little gleam grew brighter and bigger. After many hours of labor, the monk stood face-to-face with the extraordinary solid gold Buddha.

Historians believe that several hundred years before the head monk’s discovery, the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand (then called Siam). The Siamese monks realized that their country was about to be attacked and covered their precious golden Buddha with an outer layer of clay to keep their treasure from being looted by the Burmese. Unfortunately, the Burmese apparently slaughtered all of the Siamese monks, and the well-kept secret of the golden Buddha remained intact until that day in 1957.

As we flew back to Los Angeles on Cathay Pacific Airways, I began to think to myself, Just like the clay Buddha, we are all covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, anger, resignation, and self-doubt, and yet underneath that outer layer, each of us is really a “golden Buddha,” a “golden Christ,” or a “golden essence,” which is our real self. Somewhere along the way, between the ages of two and nine, we begin to cover up our “golden essence”—our natural self. Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence once again.

What about you? What have you been using drinking to cover up or hide from? What “golden” parts of yourself have you let alcohol conceal? Today we will start to uncover the answers to these two important questions and help you get back in touch with the parts of you that may have become lost due to your problem drinking.
The 30/60/90 Day Plan

In the early eighties, Maine’s legislature enacted a returnablebottle-and-can law. Instead of going into the trash, my sixteen-ounce cans of Miller Lite started going into a plastic container in the garage. One Thursday night, I went out there to toss in a few dead soldiers and saw that this container, which had been empty on Monday night, was now almost full. And since I was the only one in the house who drank Miller Lite—Holy shit, I’m an alcoholic, I thought, and there was no dissenting opinion from inside my head—I was, after all, the guy who had written The Shining without even realizing (at least until that night) that I was writing about myself. My reaction to this idea wasn’t denial or disagreement; it was what I’d call frightened determination.

—STEPHEN KING

Author of over fifty novels selling more than 350 million copies3

As we mentioned in “Getting Started,” this book was designed for you to read and implement over 30 days. We have repeatedly found that people who are serious about cutting back or quitting drinking will experience the greatest likelihood of success by completing one solution a day for 30 consecutive days.

Mike, a graduate of The 30-Day Sobriety Solution, discovered how effective it was for him to have a solution a day to turn to. He would come home every day from work and have the urge to drink, but instead of giving in to that urge, he would dive into that day’s solution. So instead of going to happy hour, he replaced that with doing the program.

We have also found that a couple of alternatives can work just as well, including completing a solution every two or three days. The key to being successful is to decide the frequency that works best for you, and then hold yourself accountable for following through with that discipline. In fact, research has shown that you are more likely to follow through with something if you have set up a structured plan of action.4

For example, if you plan to complete this program in 30 days, you need to set aside approximately forty-five minutes to an hour each day, which at first might sound like a lot of time. However, put it into perspective by thinking about the amount of time that you used to spend drinking every week. Often, the time you spent thinking about drinking, planning the next drinking event, doing the actual drinking, and then recovering from your drinking adds up to far more than an hour a day. Some of our graduates have shared that simply cutting out or cutting down their time spent on social media websites was more than enough to free up the necessary time to complete the program.

To help you succeed, we have created three email lists that you can join for free and that will help you complete The 30-Day Sobriety Solution in either 30, 60, or 90 days. For example, if you sign up for the 30-day list, you will receive an email every day for 30 days that briefly outlines that day’s content and provides links to optional online resources. If you select the 60- or 90-day option, you will receive an email every second day or every third day. You can even track your progress and what you completed each day. We strongly recommend you use this free support system to keep you on track. To sign up for one of these email support systems, simply go to http://Day1.Solutions.
Can You Ever Drink Again?

I found myself drinking two bottles of wine on the couch and said, “Jada, I think we’ve got a problem here.” From that day on, I went cold turkey. I haven’t had a drink in eight years.

—JADA PINKETT SMITH

Actor and singer-songwriter5

We are always asked two questions when working with people in The 30-Day Sobriety Solution: “Can I ever drink again?” and “Do I need to quit drinking right now?”

Cutting back is a viable option for some people, as proven by past graduates who were able to achieve a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward alcohol; in addition, numerous studies have confirmed that cutting back works for some people.6

Nonetheless, in order for you to become a social drinker, you will need to abstain from alcohol for at least 30 days. In a minute, we will discuss the magic of 30 days and why this minimum period of time is necessary for making any profound change in your life.

But you do not have to stop drinking completely today. In fact, we often tell people we work with to pick a time during the first week when they will stop drinking. However, the caveat is that you must not be under the influence of alcohol while reading this book and completing the exercises. For example, during the first week, many clients complete the program during the day, before having anything to drink.

Most importantly, depending on how much you drink, we must remind you that quitting drinking abruptly can be dangerous. Daily excessive drinkers, such as those who drink around a fifth or a liter of hard liquor a day, can experience life-threatening seizures when they quit drinking all of a sudden. So please be sure to consult a doctor before you quit.

If you decide to quit later in the first week, do not “go all out” in the days leading up to that moment. For instance, do not suddenly decide to drink twice as much as you usually do by making the excuse that you want to “make the most” of the last time that you drink. Anytime that you increase your use of a mind-altering substance, bad things can happen. You make poor decisions, drive when you should not, or drink so much that you pass out (and if you pass out lying on your back, you risk asphyxiation). Because no one knows your drinking habit like you do, be smart about how you go about quitting.

Also, our experience has shown us that cutting back works for only a very small percentage of problem drinkers. Don’t worry today about whether or not you are in this minority because, right now, you cannot know. On Day 30 we will address this question in far more detail, but for now, simply understand that you need to quit drinking completely for at least 30 days, even if only cutting back is your goal. If you are doing this program to be reinspired in your recovery, you may find the mention of a cutting-back option upsetting. We understand and respect this point of view and ask only that you don’t let your belief about this hold you back from moving forward with this program. The 30-Day Sobriety Solution can help you enrich your life in recovery and ensure your continuing success.

Last, we want to share with you a definition of sobriety: “moderation in or abstinence from consumption of alcoholic liquor or use of drugs.”7 We use the word sobriety throughout this program; however, we want to be clear that the use of this word does not exclude those who desire to only cut back. Although some dictionaries define sobriety as complete abstinence, we prefer this definition because it isn’t important if you drink or abstain, as long as alcohol no longer has a negative impact on your life and you can drink responsibly.
The 30-Day Reboot

I haven’t gone back to drinking, and the thought of ever having another hangover gives me chills. I feel great, and I can’t believe that I wasted a lot of my life trying to avoid life.

—MATT

30-Day Graduate from Kansas City, Missouri

At this point, you may be wondering what is so special about 30 days. In their book The Answer: Your Guide to Achieving Financial Freedom and Living an Extraordinary Life, John Assaraf and Murray Smith describe an experiment conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that demonstrates why it takes 25 to 30 days to successfully reprogram the brain.8 NASA was preparing to send astronauts into space and wanted to determine the mental and physical long-term effects of disorientation that the human brain and body experienced in zero gravity. It created goggles with convex lenses that turned everything upside down. Then it picked several subjects, who wore the goggles twenty-four hours a day for several weeks and attempted to function as normally as possible during this time, including eating, reading, and working, all while seeing the world upside down.

After 25 to 30 days, an amazing thing happened. One by one, the subjects started to see things right side up while still wearing the goggles. Effectively, their brains formed enough new neural connections to re-create reality in a more useful way.

The results of this experiment really are astonishing. The brain, after a few short weeks, “rewired” itself to ensure that one could not only survive but even thrive in a new environment. So, how long do you have to do something new to really change how you think—but not just to change how you think, but to actually change the neural connections in your brain to facilitate such a change in thinking? This study shows that such a change can occur in as little as three to four weeks.

Why does this matter? The bottom line is that you take daily action. We have outlined daily actions for you throughout The 30-Day Sobriety Solution, so that you can truly change the way you think and act for the long term. However, if you don’t take regular, repeated action to implement the solutions in this book, you will greatly reduce your chance to succeed.

We call this concept the 30-Day Reboot. By taking the positive action laid out in this program, including 30 days of abstinence, you are essentially “rebooting” your system. Whether your goal is to cut back or quit drinking or simply to get reinspired in your recovery, this 30-Day Reboot will provide you with the foundation you need for sobriety.
Your Destiny Is the Consequences of Your Daily Decisions

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

—TONY ROBBINS

World-renowned speaker and author of Awaken the Giant Within

Our goal for this program and our promise to you is to provide you with all of the information, inspiration, tools, and techniques that you need to recover, reclaim, and reinvent your life without alcohol, or, as we like to say, to thrive in sobriety.

We want sobriety to become second nature to you, so that the idea of taking a drink rarely enters your mind. And even when the thought of drinking does occur, it will seem more like an echo from an old habit and time rather than a serious consideration. We also want to be clear: we can...