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The Courage to Change: Hope and Help for Alcoholics and Their Families
In this powerful, inspiring volume, former "Late Night America" host and recovering alcoholic Dennis Wholey tells his story. In addition, celebrities from Doc Severinson to Sid Caesar to Jason Robards speak in their own words about the devastating effects of alcoholism.
309 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
87 people are currently reading
144 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 2, 2018
This is an unforgettable book. I often forget lots of things, but this book, although after decades after I still remember the contents and google away to find the title again.
Now I shelved this on goodread, so I will not forget.
Now I shelved this on goodread, so I will not forget.
June 21, 2024
This books makes sense. Its contents are full of truth from the writers who have struggled with alcoholism and have come out the other side. If anyone thinks they're an alcoholic, they'll know if they are once they've read this book (or even a chapter).
Notes and quotes -
Foreward
You have in your hands a very exciting and important book. What you will read will make the disease of alcoholism very real and very personal. Alcoholism affects millions of people around the world - not only the drinkers but their families, close friends, and co-workers, too. This collection of firsthand experiences by the well known and the anonymous is powerful. These self-revealing stories are not only open and honest, they are inspirational.
I am an alcoholic myself, so I understand alcoholism on a very person level. I was there once myself for many years, so I know the feelings of torment and despair.
If you think you have a drinking problem, you probably do. If you choose not to seek help or do anything about it. It will only get worse.
The message to the reader is to understand the alcoholism is a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual disease. Alcoholics are not bad or weak people. Alcoholics are sick people who need to get better.
I’m Denis, and I’m an Alcoholic -
Alcoholics have a disease; they are allergic to alcohol. They can’t drink, but they don’t know that. One drink riggers a biochemical craving that demands more drinks. No one is more confused about his drinking than the alcoholic who stops by the bar each Thursday and has three drinks, and then one night stops at the same bar and has fifteen drinks, with disastrous consequences.
Alcoholics are not bad people; they are sick people. Alcoholic behaviour is bad. Mentally and emotionally alcoholics are rougher on themselves than any outsider could ever be.
Drinking for the alcoholic has nothing to do with will power. Alcoholics can quit - we all quit many, many times - but alcoholics go back and drink again and again.
If the alcoholic takes one drink - because of the biochemical process the merry-go-round begins again. The one drink riggers the compulsion.
By the time the drinker is an alcoholic - addicted to the drug alcohol - he has lost all perspective on life and cannot see what alcohol is doing to him. Everything else is the problem and alcohol is doing the blind spot because, even though it brings mental, emotional, physical, finical, and spiritual pain, it works. It does the job it is supposed to do. Alcohol blocks out the reality of life.
Having experienced what I did growing up, I was never doing to be like my father, but I became an alcoholic too. I always felt I was the outsider, I was the longer. I was the rebel without a cause. Growing up in an alcoholic home, I was emotionally damaged as a kid, and alcohol solved all that. It made me feel good. I was happier and funnier. My shyness disappeared, and alcohol helped me fit in.
I had lived a life of extreme highs and lows. Anywhere and everywhere I went, I managed to hook up with other drinkers. I loved to drink. In my twenties, I was able to bounce back quickly. Actually, alcoholics can almost always function the next day; that’s a clear sign of the disease. Normal drinkers, when they drink too much alcohol, stay in bed for two days and stay away from alcohol for three months. Alcoholics get drunk at night and want to get up the next morning and play softball. For the alcoholic, the party never ends.
Alcoholics drink at the most inopportune times.
I was barely hanging on to life. Throughout those last few years I often isolates myself and drank. I was never at peace with myself, and that was the problem.
Blackouts were common to me for many years. I once threw a party for five hundred people in NYC. To this day, I can remember only one person who was there.
Father Quinn and I talked for three hours. The conversation was drank. I put my life on the table. All the loneliness, the depression, the anger, the frustration with people and jobs, thoughts of suicide , and fears. Quinn listened to all of it without interruption. Finally it was his turn. There was no hesitation. He said it quietly but forcefully, “The problem in your life is alcohol.”. He was right.
I certainly don’t beat myself fro being an alcoholic. I didn’t have to dow with it at all. My drinking days are behind me, and it’s not very hard not to drink. I’ve learned that nobody cares, either, expect me. Not drinking has made all the difference in the world. I never been happier in my life.
I don’t try to impress people, as I did in the past, and I try to put myself into others people’s shoes. I’m no doormat anymore, and I’m trying to rid myself the aspect of my personality that centres around people pleasing.
Chapter 2 - The Beginning
Everyone knows an alcholic whose drinking behaviour sometimes causes embarrassment to others. Alcoholics get into arguments or fights, run into financial difficulties, have blackouts, and make light of the fact that they drank too much the night before. They are unpredictable and irresponsible. Friends and family worry about their drinking.
Inside, the alcoholic is afraid of the world, a loner who doesn’t feel he belongs. Alcoholics are shy and look to alcohol for self-confidence; then they feel guilt and shame after drinking. They resent others who talk to them about their drinking. They run at half speed because of hangovers, and others around them walk on eggshells.
At the beginning of his drinking career, the alcoholic drinks to feel good. Right from the start the alcoholic likes what liquor does for him, he likes the effect. Alcohol may release his inhibitions, solve his problems, or help him fit in. Alcohol does the job.
Alcohol is a drug. Many people misunderstand alcoholism and what an alcoholic actually means. No one wakes up in the morning and decides to become an alcoholic. It is a slow process that may take years. So insidious is the disease of alcoholism that people become addicted without realising what is happening. A variety of factors play a role in alcoholism - genetic predisposition, family background, personality, social environment, and, of course, using alcohol.
Normal drinkers have a sniff or two and go about their business enjoying life and one another. Alcoholics go through life isolated, with the ether mask tired around their faces, pushing people away.
Alcohol is a drug, and if you are addicted to alcohol, you are an alcoholic. Alcohol is a compound - C2H5OH - an etherlike substance, a sedative hypnotic drug.
An alcoholic is an individual who compulsively used alcohol as it destroys his or her life and who displays other symptoms, such as withdrawal, blackouts, and changing tolerance. The ultimate consequences for a drinking alcohol are these three
- will end up in a jail
- will end up in a hospital
- will end up in a graveyard
These consequences will always threaten.
Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive disease, the same way that tuberculosis and diabetes are chronic, progressive diseases.
We talk of alcoholism in four stages
First using
Then Abusing
Then Crossing the wall
Then developing the disease.
The disease is manifested by the compulsion to use even as the using destroys your life.
You can’t become an alcoholic overnight any more than you can contract any of the other progressive diseases overnight.
The loss of control that signals alcoholism may start when a person over drinks at one party and then continues to do that for several years.
In their early teens, people being to go to parties and make plans for the next day. Then realise the next morning the they can’t pursue those plans because they drank more than they meant to.
People try to impose limits on themselves, but they are not successful. They try to impose tighter and tighter limits, saying such things as “I’m not going to drink whiskey, I’m just going to drink beer.”. As they continue to try to put constraints on their drinking, it doesn’t work. Therefore, they begin to lie about their drinking. They lie first to themselves and then to other people. At the same time, they begin to develop feelings of shame and embarrassment. They begin to hide their drinking. They do such things are drinking before going to parties, so that people won’t realise they’re drinking so much. The lying, the hiding, the shame, the phenomenon of denial begins to creep in. They begin to change brands and pretty soon they go to extremes of subterfuge and deceit, hiding their liquor.
The full-blown feelings of the alcoholic are present, predominately feelings of loneliness and loss of self-respect and self-worth.
The alcoholic continues to drink because of compulsivity and he fails to recognise the presence of the disease or the consequences of his drinking because of denial. Denial is part of the disease. Denying is different from lying. Denial is self-deception brought about by the lack of self respect and self growth. Alcoholics cannot see the nature of the disease as long as denial is there, and the disease itself presents the dilemma that it does because of the compulsion. They continue to drink and the denial gets worse. The combination of the biogenetic compulsion to drink, along with the denial, keeps them in the centre of the target. Alcoholics drive other people away because the hostility and anger and fear they project won’t permit people to come near them. They continually isolate themselves.
Alcohol is the disease of loneliness, the disease of aloneness, and until you get the alcoholic out of the centre of that target, he or she is never going to recover. Recovery, of course, is not merely taking away the drug. You have to start there. You take away the drug and lead the alcoholic out of the target syndrome. There is no longer any question that the most effective modality of treatment is not treatment centres. Treatment centres are important, and nurses are important, but the most therapeutic weapon we’ve got was started call AA. The blueprint to recovery is in the 12 step program.
Whether you become an alcoholic or not depends on genetic predisposition. We know the reason the compulsivity exists is because of a change in the endorphin and cephalin systems in a primitive portion of the brain. The reason for the disturbance in the biochemistry of the primitive brain is predisposition. Nobody talks any longer about becoming an alcoholic. You’re an alcoholic the day you get of the uterus. You are born an alcoholic.
Alcoholism is a biogenetic disease with a psychosocial background. OF course you have to abuse. That is where the motional psychosocial factors come into the disease, but the disease itself is biogenetic.
I thought I was drinking because of my problems, but my problems came from my drinking.
It was as if I’d slept with a pit of vipers all my life and I was constantly getting bitten and poisoned.
Knowledge gives you strength. Knowledge gives you courage. Without courage there can be no progress; without progress there is no solution.
There was no happiness left in alcohol, just depression.
The doors to AA meetings are open everywhere.
I have everything to gain and nothing to lose by staying sober.
Accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference
Whatever knowledge a person has cannot be taken away
Notes and quotes -
Foreward
You have in your hands a very exciting and important book. What you will read will make the disease of alcoholism very real and very personal. Alcoholism affects millions of people around the world - not only the drinkers but their families, close friends, and co-workers, too. This collection of firsthand experiences by the well known and the anonymous is powerful. These self-revealing stories are not only open and honest, they are inspirational.
I am an alcoholic myself, so I understand alcoholism on a very person level. I was there once myself for many years, so I know the feelings of torment and despair.
If you think you have a drinking problem, you probably do. If you choose not to seek help or do anything about it. It will only get worse.
The message to the reader is to understand the alcoholism is a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual disease. Alcoholics are not bad or weak people. Alcoholics are sick people who need to get better.
I’m Denis, and I’m an Alcoholic -
Alcoholics have a disease; they are allergic to alcohol. They can’t drink, but they don’t know that. One drink riggers a biochemical craving that demands more drinks. No one is more confused about his drinking than the alcoholic who stops by the bar each Thursday and has three drinks, and then one night stops at the same bar and has fifteen drinks, with disastrous consequences.
Alcoholics are not bad people; they are sick people. Alcoholic behaviour is bad. Mentally and emotionally alcoholics are rougher on themselves than any outsider could ever be.
Drinking for the alcoholic has nothing to do with will power. Alcoholics can quit - we all quit many, many times - but alcoholics go back and drink again and again.
If the alcoholic takes one drink - because of the biochemical process the merry-go-round begins again. The one drink riggers the compulsion.
By the time the drinker is an alcoholic - addicted to the drug alcohol - he has lost all perspective on life and cannot see what alcohol is doing to him. Everything else is the problem and alcohol is doing the blind spot because, even though it brings mental, emotional, physical, finical, and spiritual pain, it works. It does the job it is supposed to do. Alcohol blocks out the reality of life.
Having experienced what I did growing up, I was never doing to be like my father, but I became an alcoholic too. I always felt I was the outsider, I was the longer. I was the rebel without a cause. Growing up in an alcoholic home, I was emotionally damaged as a kid, and alcohol solved all that. It made me feel good. I was happier and funnier. My shyness disappeared, and alcohol helped me fit in.
I had lived a life of extreme highs and lows. Anywhere and everywhere I went, I managed to hook up with other drinkers. I loved to drink. In my twenties, I was able to bounce back quickly. Actually, alcoholics can almost always function the next day; that’s a clear sign of the disease. Normal drinkers, when they drink too much alcohol, stay in bed for two days and stay away from alcohol for three months. Alcoholics get drunk at night and want to get up the next morning and play softball. For the alcoholic, the party never ends.
Alcoholics drink at the most inopportune times.
I was barely hanging on to life. Throughout those last few years I often isolates myself and drank. I was never at peace with myself, and that was the problem.
Blackouts were common to me for many years. I once threw a party for five hundred people in NYC. To this day, I can remember only one person who was there.
Father Quinn and I talked for three hours. The conversation was drank. I put my life on the table. All the loneliness, the depression, the anger, the frustration with people and jobs, thoughts of suicide , and fears. Quinn listened to all of it without interruption. Finally it was his turn. There was no hesitation. He said it quietly but forcefully, “The problem in your life is alcohol.”. He was right.
I certainly don’t beat myself fro being an alcoholic. I didn’t have to dow with it at all. My drinking days are behind me, and it’s not very hard not to drink. I’ve learned that nobody cares, either, expect me. Not drinking has made all the difference in the world. I never been happier in my life.
I don’t try to impress people, as I did in the past, and I try to put myself into others people’s shoes. I’m no doormat anymore, and I’m trying to rid myself the aspect of my personality that centres around people pleasing.
Chapter 2 - The Beginning
Everyone knows an alcholic whose drinking behaviour sometimes causes embarrassment to others. Alcoholics get into arguments or fights, run into financial difficulties, have blackouts, and make light of the fact that they drank too much the night before. They are unpredictable and irresponsible. Friends and family worry about their drinking.
Inside, the alcoholic is afraid of the world, a loner who doesn’t feel he belongs. Alcoholics are shy and look to alcohol for self-confidence; then they feel guilt and shame after drinking. They resent others who talk to them about their drinking. They run at half speed because of hangovers, and others around them walk on eggshells.
At the beginning of his drinking career, the alcoholic drinks to feel good. Right from the start the alcoholic likes what liquor does for him, he likes the effect. Alcohol may release his inhibitions, solve his problems, or help him fit in. Alcohol does the job.
Alcohol is a drug. Many people misunderstand alcoholism and what an alcoholic actually means. No one wakes up in the morning and decides to become an alcoholic. It is a slow process that may take years. So insidious is the disease of alcoholism that people become addicted without realising what is happening. A variety of factors play a role in alcoholism - genetic predisposition, family background, personality, social environment, and, of course, using alcohol.
Normal drinkers have a sniff or two and go about their business enjoying life and one another. Alcoholics go through life isolated, with the ether mask tired around their faces, pushing people away.
Alcohol is a drug, and if you are addicted to alcohol, you are an alcoholic. Alcohol is a compound - C2H5OH - an etherlike substance, a sedative hypnotic drug.
An alcoholic is an individual who compulsively used alcohol as it destroys his or her life and who displays other symptoms, such as withdrawal, blackouts, and changing tolerance. The ultimate consequences for a drinking alcohol are these three
- will end up in a jail
- will end up in a hospital
- will end up in a graveyard
These consequences will always threaten.
Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive disease, the same way that tuberculosis and diabetes are chronic, progressive diseases.
We talk of alcoholism in four stages
First using
Then Abusing
Then Crossing the wall
Then developing the disease.
The disease is manifested by the compulsion to use even as the using destroys your life.
You can’t become an alcoholic overnight any more than you can contract any of the other progressive diseases overnight.
The loss of control that signals alcoholism may start when a person over drinks at one party and then continues to do that for several years.
In their early teens, people being to go to parties and make plans for the next day. Then realise the next morning the they can’t pursue those plans because they drank more than they meant to.
People try to impose limits on themselves, but they are not successful. They try to impose tighter and tighter limits, saying such things as “I’m not going to drink whiskey, I’m just going to drink beer.”. As they continue to try to put constraints on their drinking, it doesn’t work. Therefore, they begin to lie about their drinking. They lie first to themselves and then to other people. At the same time, they begin to develop feelings of shame and embarrassment. They begin to hide their drinking. They do such things are drinking before going to parties, so that people won’t realise they’re drinking so much. The lying, the hiding, the shame, the phenomenon of denial begins to creep in. They begin to change brands and pretty soon they go to extremes of subterfuge and deceit, hiding their liquor.
The full-blown feelings of the alcoholic are present, predominately feelings of loneliness and loss of self-respect and self-worth.
The alcoholic continues to drink because of compulsivity and he fails to recognise the presence of the disease or the consequences of his drinking because of denial. Denial is part of the disease. Denying is different from lying. Denial is self-deception brought about by the lack of self respect and self growth. Alcoholics cannot see the nature of the disease as long as denial is there, and the disease itself presents the dilemma that it does because of the compulsion. They continue to drink and the denial gets worse. The combination of the biogenetic compulsion to drink, along with the denial, keeps them in the centre of the target. Alcoholics drive other people away because the hostility and anger and fear they project won’t permit people to come near them. They continually isolate themselves.
Alcohol is the disease of loneliness, the disease of aloneness, and until you get the alcoholic out of the centre of that target, he or she is never going to recover. Recovery, of course, is not merely taking away the drug. You have to start there. You take away the drug and lead the alcoholic out of the target syndrome. There is no longer any question that the most effective modality of treatment is not treatment centres. Treatment centres are important, and nurses are important, but the most therapeutic weapon we’ve got was started call AA. The blueprint to recovery is in the 12 step program.
Whether you become an alcoholic or not depends on genetic predisposition. We know the reason the compulsivity exists is because of a change in the endorphin and cephalin systems in a primitive portion of the brain. The reason for the disturbance in the biochemistry of the primitive brain is predisposition. Nobody talks any longer about becoming an alcoholic. You’re an alcoholic the day you get of the uterus. You are born an alcoholic.
Alcoholism is a biogenetic disease with a psychosocial background. OF course you have to abuse. That is where the motional psychosocial factors come into the disease, but the disease itself is biogenetic.
I thought I was drinking because of my problems, but my problems came from my drinking.
It was as if I’d slept with a pit of vipers all my life and I was constantly getting bitten and poisoned.
Knowledge gives you strength. Knowledge gives you courage. Without courage there can be no progress; without progress there is no solution.
There was no happiness left in alcohol, just depression.
The doors to AA meetings are open everywhere.
I have everything to gain and nothing to lose by staying sober.
Accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference
Whatever knowledge a person has cannot be taken away
April 18, 2022
A must read when working recovery, and strongly suggested for anyone in a support role.
February 16, 2015
Wow. This came out in 1984 and I stopped drinking in 1982. I would have gotten more use out of it back then. Now some of the names of the well-known people who are sober are known to people my age but probably not to the newcomer. Also, lots of folks had no difficulty with violating that anonymity clause. I didn't bother to check to see who was still sober, but I understand the logic behind the recommendation. I've had this on my bookshelf for a while. Going to pass it on to someone who can use it...
August 26, 2008
The Courage to Change provokes an interesting premise. Can any one person stop drinking by his or her own self will? One of my favorite songs is “I am changing” from Dream girls. I certainly know I need to change and have tried many times in the past. I am giving it another go on my own, I will see what happens.
August 25, 2010
One of those books you read to learn about other people's lives. Not just for those affected by alcohol.
July 21, 2013
I read this when it came out. Very inspirational, still have it on the shelf.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews