I drink, or drank,
the normal thing
. When I meet friends it is to have a beer or a wine,
the normal thing
. When I drink too much I have a hard time recovering a whole day,
which is normal
. But after having my first video call with Geoffrey Molloy a couple of weeks before going to the retreat that he teaches at his home in Cantabria,
It's easy to live without alcohol if you know how
, when he asks me to write down the times I drink and why I do, I start to wonder if it really is that
normal
.
Not only did I just speak with one of the gurus of rehabilitation in Spain - companies such as Aena, Iberdrola, Mercedes-Benz or Schweppes have sent their employees to one of their programs to work on emotions, improve nutrition or treat addictions of everything kind - but the conversation took place right after a hellish hangover (it came from a birthday,
the normal
). Despite how dissuasive both experiences should have been, I find myself aiming a couple of canes at a family meal, several thirds after accompanying a close friend as a witness to the Civil Registry (it is not officially her wedding, but we celebrate it as if it were outside) and one night, to pair with a movie, I pour myself a glass of wine - a custom acquired during the confinement of 2020, the year we drank dangerously - which ends up being half a bottle.
To my surprise, when I arrive at the bucolic Cantabrian farm of Las Bardas, in Coo, where I will stay from Thursday to Sunday, I discover that yes, what I drink is
normal
. Here we do not all have the same level of consumption: one of my colleagues, I will soon discover, accumulates problems with the law for driving drunk. The Molloys' house is not a clinic where anyone can be forced into, so all of our profiles are similar: people who have come to the conclusion that they want to change their habits. “Alcohol, despite being so socially accepted (in Spain it is consumed by 65.6% of the population over 15 years of age, according to data from the Ministry of Health), is an addictive substance; and
the normal
in an addictive substance it is to create tolerance and dependence ”, explains Molloy.
"Those who habitually drink alcohol - whether they are aware of it or not - don't drink when they want to, just don't drink when they can't."
"People who drink have a series of walls (schedules, responsibilities, money, stomach, modesty, opportunities ...) that can fall and it is not easy for them to get back up," he continues.
For example, confinement in many cases broke the unspoken rules not to drink alone, during the week, at home and / or in the morning.
Upon returning to (relative) normality, unless it was mandatory to re-erect them (for example, by having to return to the office), some of those walls would have disappeared.
Geoffrey Molloy, creator with his wife Rhea Sivi of the project 'Living awake is easy, if you know how!', Which includes specific treatments to overcome different addictions.
Phase 1: One day and I leave it forever?
On Wednesday night the four participants in the therapy, arriving from different parts of Spain, had dinner at the Molloys' family home. During the four days that the retreat will last - my program costs 1,340 euros, other cheaper options start at 475 euros - we will settle in Geoffrey's family home, with his wife Rhea (in charge of the smoking cessation program) and their children. It is a stone house with a wooden interior, and it has a stable with cows and horses that graze freely all day. There is also a wood stove and a huge walnut table that looks like something out of a mountain hut. While we devour a sweet potato-based pizza made by two of his daughters, Ishtar and Kiira Sivi (responsible for the nutrition program and the meditation and movement classes),Molloy warns us of what is possibly the biggest trap of alcohol: the beliefs and prejudices we have about it. For example, that people who don't drink are boring. The Molloys don't taste alcohol, but they have a lively and interesting conversation. He also asks us during dinner that, precisely for this reason, we question everything, that we do not create anything at face value, not even what is part of the program that will begin the next day.not even what is part of the program that will start the next day.not even what is part of the program that will start the next day.
Personally, if I feel some skepticism, it is due to the fact that only one day, Thursday, is dedicated to alcohol. For the next three days, Molloy will teach us to develop our emotional resilience by learning
mindfulness
techniques
.
The next morning my skepticism lessens as I hear a series of arguments in fluent Spanish from Molloy, an Irishman of Malaysian descent who has been in our country for decades, the last two sober. His presence has something of an Obi-Wan Kenobi (but that of Sir Alec Guinness) in a friendly version. The easy treatment hides his difficult trajectory: a tragic childhood and a youth of excesses led him to seek help for years, help that he found in part in Buddhist philosophy - not religion - which he applies today with more sense of humor than sectarianism .
Despite the complexity of the references, his way of dealing with addictions is crystal clear.
It simply leads us to question and reason the almost always arbitrary reasons why we drink.
That way of clarifying issues is reminiscent of
It's Easy to Quit Smoking
, Allen Carr's best-seller with which millions of smokers have stopped smoking.
And it is no coincidence: Rhea and Geoffrey were, in addition to the book's Spanish translators, collaborators and close friends of Carr until his death in 2006.
The Las Bardas farm in Coo (Cantabria), where Geoffrey Molloy receives the participants in his retreat to overcome alcohol addiction.
Of why there are no 'heroinolics'
But it is Thursday and we are not talking about emotions yet, but about socially accepted fictions. Among the myths that Molloy will dismantle in a single session are that alcohol relaxes you (rather, it leaves you unconscious), gives you joy or makes you happy (impossible, since it is a depressant of the nervous system), gives you value ( actually makes you reckless) or makes you interesting and / or more skilled. "There are only three sure things that alcohol does give you: increasing dependency, depression and degradation," Molloy emphasizes.
One of the great contributions of the late Carr to collective thinking was to make us understand that the main difference between nicotine and other drugs such as heroin is that the former is legal. According to Molloy (who has been organizing these retreats since 2008), the exact same thing happens with alcohol, "no matter how much society accepts that beer is a kind of soft drink for adults." What Molloy had empirically proven is something that several researchers such as neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt or neuroscientist Marc Lewis are beginning to demonstrate: alcoholism is not a disease, but an addiction. According to studies and independent sources respected by the scientific community, such as The Lancet or Cochrane, there is no safe consumption of alcohol:even casual or social drinkers are exposed to the risks of ethanol.
This approach is totally different from Alcoholics Anonymous, whose Big Book distinguishes between
normal
drinkers
(who
control
their consumption) and alcoholics, who have not chosen to be, simply have a “disease” that is chronic and incurable, so at best they can aspire to always be in recovery.
The idea that alcoholism is a disease prevails among many physicians.
And according to a 2006 Gallup poll, 90% of the population believe it.
Upon hearing this in Las Bardas, one of the attendees, an Asturian, asked: "And what happens with those people who have a drink and know how to stop?"
"First of all, forget the suffix
ito
applied to alcohol and cane in the singular, because that does not exist ”, responds Molloy. "People who say they have it under control, either lie (as everyone here will have done on occasion) or they are in the first phase of addiction," he adds. The truth is that no one in this group seems to have 'hit rock bottom' (another alcoholic jargon term). We all belong to Generation X, we are around 40, we have work, healthy relationships and an acceptable state of health. “Many times I have seen people with cirrhosis or cancer caused by alcohol. Curiously, these people accept the diseases themselves quite strongly, what destroys them is to think that they have generated them themselves ”, he continues. For Molloy, it is the alcohol itself that is to blame for the addiction, not the addict. We are not guilty, but we are responsible.
Some of the retreat attendees take long walks through the Cantabrian fields and cliffs, one of the key points in Geoffrey Molloy's program to overcome alcohol addiction.
With alcohol, says Molloy, we are living right now what has happened in the last two decades with tobacco.
According to the 2021 European Health Survey of the National Institute of Statistics, 22% of the Spanish population considers itself “ex-smokers” and 55.9% have never smoked.
In other words, today 77.9% of people over 15 years of age in Spain are non-smokers.
However, according to the ICARIA study, in 2005 47.97% of Spaniards smoked regularly.
Regarding alcohol, the figures support Molloy's statement: only 8% of Spanish adolescents drink alcohol each week, a third of those who did so in 2006.
The myth of the sad ex-alcoholic
The numbers also support Molloy in his program to quit alcohol. “Slightly more than 50% of the participants leave it in the four days spent here and they don't need any more help; between 20 and 25% need extra help (the program continues with eight weeks of distance learning and includes a follow-up for a year with Molloy), but they also get it. The others, despite the follow-up and support, cannot abstain for more than a few weeks or a few months ”, he explains. A success rate that exceeds 70% is unusual when it comes to addictions. According to Lance Dodes, a retired Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and author of
The Sober Truth
(The sober truth, published by Beacon Press), the real success rate of conventional treatments (those that usually assume that alcoholism is a disease) is between 5 and 8%.
“I have nothing against Alcoholics Anonymous, on the contrary, I believe that most of its members have a genuine desire to help others and, on the other hand, it is one of the only spaces where someone with problems can be absolutely sincere, and only drinkers know how much they lie and the damage it does to them ”, clarifies Geoffrey Molloy.
"I simply know that it is possible to give up alcohol without becoming a gloomy person who counts the days without ever feeling completely free."
A lawyer from Barcelona replies that, despite everything, it cannot be denied that at some point we have all had a good time (or very good) drinking. “It is true that at the beginning of alcohol consumption, usually during the adolescence or twenties, there is a phase that can be pleasant,” Molloy concedes. But he adds that this is precisely the bait of all drugs. “Over time we develop tolerance, which means that we will need to drink more to reach that
point.
;
We will also gradually create greater dependence, which implies that we no longer only drink in search of the point, but also to alleviate the monkey that alcohol itself creates.
In the stages that follow, the point no longer appears, only a kind of anesthesia, but we will continue drinking trusting to find it, refusing to see that not only is it not fun, but that it is costing us money and health without giving us anything in return ", judgment.
One of the bedrooms in the Molloys' family home, where the small groups that attend their program to overcome addictions stay.María Farrés
According to the expert, it is this phase when we stop deceiving ourselves, but we don't really know what to do either.
“Given that almost all the adults we know continue to drink and that society looks down on the alcoholic (who carries a kind of eternal stigma of weakness), it is difficult for us to ask for help.
And once we ask for it, the most accepted approach, that of AA, promises you a life of sacrifice, because you will always crave a drink but you will have to resist every day of your life, ”he explains.
"A one-sided sheet"
Molloy's approach closely resembles that of the American psychologist Stanton Peele. It is possible to realize how easy, rewarding and even exciting it can be to give up alcohol. And that is something that he manages to transmit in just one day. His method sheds light and scientific knowledge on the shadows in which we move to continue drinking ("I like how it tastes", "it is that if not, life is not enjoyed the same") and one by one he dismantles all those alibis until that we see clear, sharp and naked the nature of alcohol. Geoffrey uses very clear analogies, such as “pretending to have a drink without developing alcohol dependence is like going to a stationery store and asking for a sheet of paper that only has one face on it; that simply does not exist ”. At this point,Three of us felt a mixture of motivation and euphoria imagining the increase in energy, health and self-esteem that a life without alcohol promises.
The fourth assistant punctures the bubble by asking what will happen when, instead of Monet's dream of the Molloys' farm, we are surrounded by our friends in a bar.
He is from Seville and admits that he has tried to quit or control it on several occasions, only to relapse later (at least until now): “When I stopped smoking, everyone congratulated me, but every time I tried not to drink or drink less, my friends ended up telling me that nothing happens for one ”, he admits.
Geoffrey's response: “Every addiction creates complicity among those who suffer from it;
your friends are hooked and seeing that you don't need alcohol makes them look in an uncomfortable mirror, that's why it's easier for them to drink again than to examine themselves, ”he explains.
Phase 2: three days of self-observation
And precisely to learn to handle fear are the next three days, those dedicated to emotional resilience. New participants join this last part of the program. Three of them come after seeing the changes that retirement has brought about in a mutual friend. The room is here because two years ago he quit smoking with Rhea and wants to sleep better and stop worrying and turning over the same ruminant ideas using the same method. You already know that it is fast, effective and long-lasting.
The work is intense, but manageable even for me, who have fallen asleep, frustrated and / or bored in more sessions of yoga, meditation and other therapies than I can remember. For years I have tried, but the mere fact of controlling my breathing caused me more stress. At the Las Bardas farm I discover that it is not about controlling it, but about observing it. And not just breathing: I also learn to contemplate my own thoughts without assuming that they are absolute truths.
Mindfulness
techniques
, of compassion and self-pity and gratitude, as Geoffrey Molloy conveys them, there is nothing esoteric or tedious about them. In fact, during these sessions the laughter is as common as the silences in the meditations (one of them walking along the cliffs of Liencres). Despite having been without alcohol for almost a week, I feel that euphoric "this has to be repeated."
I ask Geoffrey and Rhea if they are not amazed by the good harmony that has been created between this group of strangers.
With a smile, they regret putting my feet on the ground: “We have been there for thirteen years and only one or two people have gotten on badly with their group;
we always take into account the profile of people to ensure their compatibility ”.
Perhaps my display of enthusiasm is due to the fact that during our practices Molloy's indications have penetrated deeply: "We must observe ourselves with open curiosity, with kindness and with a little sense of humor."
I must clarify that there is little spiritual in me, but there is something in this method that is simple and consistent for me.
And, above all, it reduces anxiety and worries.
It seems to me reason enough to continue putting it into practice.
Phase 3: my life now
In the first days after returning from retirement, what most caught the attention of the people around me is not that I don't drink, but how my levels of pessimism and neurosis have dropped. Not that he had an epiphany. It's just that by doing a few minutes of formal (meditating) and informal (trying to stay focused on the present) practice daily, stress is more manageable for me. "We cannot create happiness, but we can create the most favorable conditions to experience it: it is a garden that must be watered daily," Geoffrey, whom I now recall as Obi Wan as Luke, told us.
As for alcohol, at the moment I neither miss it nor desire it, not even when I see people drinking who seem to enjoy it or when I find myself in situations that could be tempting (which in Spain go from a beach to a party). I remember that we were warned: "If you have worked it out mentally, you face these contexts as reinforcing, instead of with fear and doubts." I have to confess that I have two aces up my sleeve. On the one hand, on the return trip I read the book
It's easy to live without alcohol ... if you know how!
from Geoffrey Molloy himself, so I have reinforced what I learned in Cantabria.
On the other hand, what the Sevillian said during the retreat has not happened to me either: no friend has insisted that I drink. I don't know if they think I really had a problem, if it's because they secretly believe that sooner or later I will drink again, if they trust my resolve, or if they just don't think enough of me to harbor any of these thoughts. I have no way of knowing what other people think. Before, he would surely have been ruminating for weeks to find out what is the matter. Today, the thought that I can't know what's going on in other people's minds - in fact, I can't even control the next thought that will cross my mind - gives me some relief. And I like that this is now normal. No italics.
You can follow ICON on
,
,
, or subscribe here to the
Newsletter
.
