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HOLMES’S COMPLETE GUIDE TO STOP DRINKING ALCOHOL;
THE EASY, MINDFUL AND PAIN-FREE WAY (Publ. 7/2021)

  • A 375 – PAGE BOOK BASED ON ALCOHOL FACTS
    TO LET YOU DECIDE WHETHER TO CONTROL OR STOP WITH OVER 300+ ACADEMIC REFERENCES
  • QUIT PAINLESSLY WITHOUT USING WILLPOWER, WITHOUT A HIGHER POWER, WITHOUT CRAVINGS 
  • USING COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (CBT) WHICH IS TRIED AND TESTED AND HAS HELPED MILLIONS QUIT ALCOHOL PERMANENTLY

“Most of what you read about alcohol is just plain wrong”
– Mark Holmes, Author

I was a successful international school Principal, happily married with two children and a dark secret.

Over the years, I had slowly transformed from an occasional binge drinker at University, to a habitual evening drinker, to a high-functioning alcoholic. But I had to find a way out.

I began reading everything I could find about alcohol, all the “quit lit” books out there, and attended AA, but the most I ever achieved was temporary “success” in an endless frustrating cycle of repeatedly quitting. I knew there had to be a better way.

 

 If AA and “quit lit” books didn’t have the answer, I needed to look elsewhere and discovered scientific research in medical journals that proved all the “quit lit” books were wrong!

They all claimed that Alcohol was a “depressant” and therefore you had to be mad if you thought alcohol gave you any pleasure. But you’re not mad at all. Alcohol is NOT a depressant, it is a biphasic stimulant sedative (See Press Release). But the media don’t want to listen. I am shouting the “Emperor has no clothes,” but everyone is button-lipped!

The problems is, if they don’t even know what alcohol is, how can they know how to help you stop drinking it? 

My research led me to the door of a famous Psychiatrist, and former Psychoanalyst, who discovered that the depressed patients he was treating usually had negative automatic thoughts about self, others or the world, based on irrational dysfunctional intermediate (rules, assumptions) and core beliefs.

But if thoughts made these, then correcting these thoughts could un-make them. His name was Aaron T. Beck (picture opp.) and he founded Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

I immediately realised that this was “The Key” to the elusive elixir of being happy permanently clean and sober. But that is only half the story. CBT alone wasn’t enough.

 

Where CBT is strongest is in its psychological framework and methodology which has been tried and tested to work for millions. However, it is only half the story because research revealed many new essential tools and techniques, including proven relapse prevention methods like H.A.LT., and  Mindfulness to make the journey to sobriety easy and painless.

This book will help you manage an alcohol intake reduction programme using CBT whilst simultaneously increasing mindfulness, thus guaranteeing you have the ability to quit drinking and be clean permanently.

Don’t worry if you have never done meditation before, or can’t achieve the full Lotus position (!) this book assumes this is your first time meditating and all you need to be able to do is sit on a chair and close your eyes.

Holmes has visited Buddhist temples in Northern Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and never achieved the half-lotus, never mind full lotus position! (Although he is as bald as a monk!!!) It is not the outside appearance that counts, but what’s inside.

Holmes was able to utilize the research and writing skills he developed on his Master’s degree at the University of London, as well as his years of teaching and training as a CBT therapist,  to write  in what The Independent Review of Books called a “Fact-based” and “highly entertaining” style.

“I wanted to write the definitive Guidebook to Sobriety,” Holmes said. “With the facts but without it reading like a textbook. I was really writing to myself and explaining the latest research findings but also what I needed to stop drinking once and for all myself. This is what worked for me.” 

Rather than the stereotypical bearded alcoholic passed out in a shop doorway, most alcoholics are highly intelligent, high functioning, middle-aged men and women with high incomes and successful careers who, ironically, would never class themselves, like Mark Holmes, as “alcoholics”.

This book is not a one-sided patronising rant against the tyranny of alcohol like many “quit-lit” books, but rather attempts to give you a balanced view, based on the latest research in 2021 of the Facts about Alcohol, and leaves you to make up your own mind.

What do independent reviewers say? 

 Mark Holmes, Author of “Holmes’s Complete Guide To Stop Drinking Alcohol; The Easy, Mindful and Pain-free Way.”