According to the ABC theory of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) that I (AE) originated in 1955, and according to the other cognitive-behavioral therapies that followed RET, this is what usually occurs when you make yourself neurotic. That is, when you make yourself anxious, depressed, enraged, self-hating, phobic, or addicted. You take your preferences and desires for healthy Goals (such as success, approval, comfort, and pleasure) and you turn them into strong, rigid shoulds, oughts, musts, and commands. Like the rest of us, you are fallible and imperfect. Because others and world conditions often thwart your grandiose musts, you make yourself needlessly miserable when you devoutly believe a must. In RET we coined the term musturbation to highlight humorously this un-humorous process by which you make yourself miserable. An old saying in RET is “Musturbation leads to self-abuse.”

If you drink alcohol so that it interferes directly or indirectly with achieving your goals, you have a problem with it. You can make drinking a problem when you give it excessive power to enable you to cope better, to feel good, or to help you reduce emotional distress. It’s a problem when you believe you need it for those or other purposes. Problem behavior is defined by how much it hinders you in reaching your goals. Because different people have different goals, your problem in one situation may not be a problem for other people in a different setting. If, for instance, you go out every night with your crowd and drink, and then fail a big test, your drinking is a problem if you believe it is more important in the long run to pass the test.

Your best bet for changing your self-defeating behavior is first to admit you are responsible for your behavior and for changing it. Second, accept yourself as a person who currently is defeating yourself. Third, refuse to label yourself as a loser or a victim. If you call yourself a victim, you focus on the unfortunate Activating Events or Adversities (A’s) in your life. But in doing so you may give these A’s too much and yourself too little power and control over you. If you adopt the role of “victim,” you make yourself powerless to do anything about your Belief System (B) concerning the Adversities (A’s). When you neglect changing your Belief System, you will fail to change your disturbances and addictions (Cs) and your Adversities (A’s). Then you make yourself into a “helpless victim.”

Rational-Emotive Therapy shows you how to achieve unconditional self-acceptance rather than highly conditional self-esteem. How do you gain self-acceptance? Simply by choosing to have it, instead of choosing, as you often do, to set yourself up for a fall by trying to achieve pride and self-esteem. [...]

If you have begun to accept yourself unconditionally despite your poor behavior (but dislike the poor behavior) you are ahead of the game. You are better off than (but not a better person than) most people. What else helps you change? Next, learn and practice the three insights of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET). They can give you the power to change yourself in the here-and-now, not just “some day.”

RET’s Three Insights

Insight No. 1: Your current feelings and actions have causes. The most important causes of your addictions are your thoughts, attitudes, images, memories, and other cognitions. This is what RET calls B, your Belief System, especially your stinking thinking or irrational Beliefs (iBs).

Insight No. 2: Wherever your Belief Systems originated (parents, family, society, traumas, biology, self-inventions), you carry them on now and actively believe and follow them. You steadily reindoctrinate yourself in them today and sometimes actively fight off others’ attempts to get you to change them.

Insight No. 3: You require hard, persistent work to change your Beliefs, actions, and feelings, to practice new ones, and to avoid returning to old ones. Further, your human condition tends to give new problems and stresses. So insight is not the main watchword. Eternal vigilance plus much work and practice is.

Like many people, you may enjoy thinking about the past and probing it in great detail. You may believe that you have to understand it to be able to escape its hold. Fortunately, the past does not exist except in your head and in your present habits. You can escape its hold by focusing on the present and by detecting, challenging, and changing your own Beliefs. And by forcing yourself to change your here-and-now habits.

People who obsess about the past often feel a need to justify who they are before they feel qualified to move on. They are afraid to take action right now to change their lives because “What if I made a mistake?” And “It’ll be easier to do once I have the right insights about how my Dysfunctional Family of Origin made me what I am today and gave me the disturbances and addictions I have now.” Such ideas sound plausible. They will sound plausible ten years from now, too, but you won’t have changed.

The main and most direct “cause” of your disturbed, problem drinking is your Belief System (B). It is your Belief System about the early, present, and possible future Activating Events or Adversities (A’s) of your life. It is your Belief System about the negative emotions you create with your Belief System and how you can’t stand those feelings. And it is your Belief System about pleasurable feelings and how you must have them and can’t stand not having them. Addiction is strengthened by your Belief System about how you must not get and can’t stand the poor results you cause yourself because you devoutly Believe you must have certain good feelings and must not have certain bad feelings. And, finally, addiction is strengthened by your tendency to damn yourself, others, or life because of their bad characteristics.

What is more, B is your choice, your philosophy, your outlook. So no matter what and how difficult your A’s are, you can usually discover, understand, and change B. Whatever you believe, you can challenge and rethink. Not, of course, if you are in a coma or seriously brain damaged! Not very effectively if you are (temporarily) panicked, drugged, or intoxicated. But when you free yourself to stop and think, you can greatly change B. How? By using many Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) methods that we shall describe in detail, and that we’ll call Self-help: RET style.

If you are a dedicated heavy drinker, you have trained yourself to believe that alcohol has special benefits and that it is necessary for various purposes, such as celebration, relaxation, courage, and coping abilities. These are ideas in your head, not facts, but you devoutly believe them. The truth is that alcohol can sedate you and interfere with your thinking and coordination, and that’s about it. You have given it much more power—placebo power—than it truly has. If you never drink another drop of alcohol, you won’t miss much. You can obtain good feelings and develop social skills without alcohol (or other chemicals).

When you find yourself awfulizing about crummy reality, make a detailed plan about how you could in fact deal with it and stand it. Write out your plan. Brainstorm alternatives. Have you coped with similar or worse situations in the past? What if you were awfulizing and whining about some obnoxious event, and we offered you a million dollars in cash, tax free, to come up with a sensible plan to cope with the crummy situation? Could you? Would you? Almost certainly, you would. The main reason why you may often refuse to cope with lousy realities is that you deeply believe that you should not have to do so. Good luck on this planet with that attitude!

When you have notable low frustration tolerance, you decide that you simply cannot bear discomfort. In the short run giving up alcohol or almost any addiction leads to more discomfort. LFT is usually the main reason that you fail to stop your addictions. You believe it’s too much of an effort. You stubbornly refuse to be uncomfortable right now, and thereby give yourself much more discomfort and lack of satisfaction in the future.