Alcohol-free living has been vitally important to its founder since his decision to live sober himself on June 26,1981. He has been actively involved with Alcoholics Anonymous since then and remains active. He has also been very active with various Christian Churches. He was a practicing neurosurgeon for around 25 years and then change to management of complex chronic pain and added outpatient office management of opiate addiction with Suboxone. He has had a lot of experience in dealing with the many challenges of living life alcohol free. His nickname in AA given to him during his first year of sobriety was given to him by the Anaheim Friday night Men’s Stag meeting member called “Ungrateful Bud” who called him “Suicide Tom”! He did not commonly use this handle but shared the story of his nickname at a Klamath Falls noon meeting about 3 years ago. A friend named Kim told him after his sharing about his “Suicide Tom”: “That is one lousy nickname! You ought to change it”. “Do you have any suggestion?” “I sure do; the perfect nickname for you would be “Happy Tom!”” It turned out to be a great suggestion as it started a search for living up to that nickname.
Alcohol-Free Living is a website dedicated to helping people decide that learning to live their life without drinking any alcohol, the Alcohol-Free Lifestyle, is in their best interest. It has been scientifically demonstrated that the only level of alcohol consumption consistent with OPTIMAL HEALTH IS ZERO DRINKS A DAY! Alcohol damages the drinker’s health and there are no health benefits from drinking alcohol, NONE.
Americans and a lot of the World drink alcohol, sometimes a lot of it. However, close to half of the World abstains from drinking. In some areas of the World, up to 90% of the people in an area, such as the Middle East, have never drank alcohol.
Alcohol has been shown to cause a lot of damage to people’s health. It also kills a lot of folks. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was initially thought to have caused 1.8 million deaths worldwide. This was increased to 3 million deaths later. This is a lot of death but it is less than the 3.5 million who died from their use of alcohol.
Alcohol is known as the third leading cause of preventable deaths and is related to the first and second causes of preventable deaths. The leading cause of preventable deaths is poor diet/inactivity and the second cause of preventable death is use of tobacco. Alcohol drinkers are notorious for their poor diets, lack of exercise and smoking.
The number of deaths from alcohol has been steadily increasing and recently hit 144,000. This is a high number but it is most likely an understatement (underestimate); it will continue to grow because the American attitude towards alcohol is permissive, flippant, encouraging and unrestrained. When I have suggested to High Schoolers or even Junior High Schoolers that they should abstain from alcohol for their health and optimizing their chances of success, they are laughed in my face and heaped scorn on my “stupidity” and naivety! That was surprising to me but it should not have been.
This website offers several features. It has a “Blog Section”; which will have summaries of scientific articles freely available on the Internet with my opinion as to their significance. These articles will be about ALCOHOL EFFECTS AND HOW THIS KNOWLEDGE CAN HELP US TO LIVE ALCOHOL-FREE.
There is a lot of science available that shoes how alcohol impairs health. There are also abundant article that shows ways of improving our health that alcohol has impacted.
This website will also have a “CONSULTATION SECTION” where interested people can arrange telephone conversations about living Alcohol-Free. There is an offer of a free 30 minute phone conference. Further consultation period are available for a prepaid fee.
Ultimately each individual must determine that they no longer want to have alcohol in their life. For most people this is not difficult to do, especially if they have never started drinking. These nondrinkers are usually able to avoid alcohol easily and can arrange their life to support this decision.
People who are drinking alcohol at the time that they read this oftentimes have difficulty stopping their use of alcohol. Before they have decided to take that first drink of alcohol a lot of things have happened to them. They ultimately have decided that alcohol has something to offer them and they have minimized the dangers of drinking telling themselves: “The bad things that happen to alcohol drinkers will not happen to me!” They are known to inflate the benefits of booze and minimize or negate the negatives of alcohol. Studies in adolescent drinkers, the age that most Americans start imbibing will be reviewed in the Blog Section and will amaze the reader!
Everyone who starts to drink alcohol has usually thought quite a bit about their decision to drink; some of this thought occurs consciously but most of it occurs in the unconscious portion of the brain. They have received a lot of influences from the alcohol industry. Before drinking they will have received hundreds, if not thousands of messages extolling alcohol. During the past football season an ad telling us that we needed to learn how to host cocktail hours during the game. They receive no reliable truthful information. We are being bombarded with ALCOHOL INDUSTRY PROPAGANDA DESIGNED TO BRAINWASH US IN FAVOR OF DRINKING. This propaganda has been shown to be directed at our youth. Alcohol education of our youth has been adopted by the alcohol industry that pushes “responsible drinking” as the norm rather than abstinence. It makes common sense that we should not have the “foxes” (alcohol industry) guarding the “hen house”! ALCOHOL IS A DRUG A POWERFUL DRUG. As a drug alcohol has been determined to be the MOST DANGEROUS DRUG IN THE WORLD causing damage to the drinker, people around the drinker, the family, the work place, and society.
Alcohol impacts the drinker in numerous ways and it is helpful to discuss how it does this with someone who is knowledgeable about alcohol from many different approaches. The website owner has 42+ years of continuous sobriety (Sobriety Date: June 26, 1981), was a practicing clinical physician for over 30 years, and has studied alcohol for the past five years, daily reading articles, books and talking with people struggling with or celebrating living life alcohol-free. Alcohol can impact the drinker’s health by several avenues. It can impact a person’s: 1) Physical Health; 2) Hormonal Health; 3) Development of Chronic Pain; 4) Mental/Emotional Health; 5) Social Functioning; 6) Relationships- parents, wife, children, relatives, friends, associates; 7) Financial Health; Work (Vocational) Health; 9) Avocational Health; 10) Religious Health; 11) Spiritual Health; and 12) Holistic Health. Alcohol impacts every area of your life. It makes sense to talk about how alcohol limits what you can accomplish with your life. The website creator maintains that alcohol damaged his health severely in ways that cannot be changed. This significant damage occurred with less than 2 years of “blackout” drinking. He wishes that he had been told about what might happen to him (Unfortunately a lot of what you will learn reading this website was not known at that time), that he had been told: “You do not have to drink alcohol. Your health will be better if you never drink alcohol. You can learn to live better by living alcohol-free.” No one will benefit from drinking alcohol, except those who sell it. Every Alcoholic wishes that they had never started to drink! Bruce told me: “I wish I had never started to drink that crap. I would have had a much better chance of accomplishing something more meaningful with my life. I had fun drinking but it just became a senseless habit. Eventually it started to ruin my life. When I was facing a year in the LA County jail for my third DUI; I finally decided that alcohol was stupid and was going to ruin what life I had left. That was 36+ years ago. I really wish that I had never had a drink of alcohol. What a damn waste!” When I told him about what alcohol did to a person’s life and health he angrily said: “Nobody ever told me all this stuff! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me this stuff? All I ever heard was a bunch of fairy tales and stories about how grand booze made your life. What a bunch of BS.” I’m the blog we will include several stories and anecdotes about people with ALCOHOLISM IN RECOVERY learning to live their lives alcohol-free one day at a time. Alcohol has never solved a single problem; it creates problems. It should really make sense to stay away from alcohol, drinking alcohol will one day be seen an abnormal state. We plan to work towards that. We welcome you here. How can we help you?
