Alcoholism Stages of Change

Alcoholism's stages of change has seven parts.  Usually a person will progress through them in order when they are going forward. When they are going backward, however, they may go from stage six to three or any other place.  It's hard to tell where they might wind up.

Here are the stages as they apply to the alcoholic or any other addict.

1) Precontemplation At this stage, you may not recognize the problem or you may think the problem not worth the trouble of changing.  You may be thinking about change because someone or something is forcing you to.  At this point just gathering information can be useful.  Like coming to this website or attending a meeting. 

2)Contemplation At this stage, your doing a cost benefit analysis.  Your deciding if it is worth the effort. Does alcohol do more for good things for you than it does bad.

3)Determination/Preparation Here you are ready to make plans.  Your formulating a plan of attack and strengthening your resolve to go forward.  A changeplan worksheet can be helpful in discovering options.

4)Action This is where you have your plan and you implement it. You may go to a self help group, you may choose professional alcoholism treatment help, you may decide to make a go of it on your own. (Spontaneously quitting, with no help, isn't as rare as you might think.  In college they told me as many as 1/3 of all problem drinkers just stop.  They also told us these were the group of people who suffered the fewest relapses.)  Anyway, this is the stage that the rubber meets the road.

5)Maintenance This is a few months into your sobriety.  At this point you are looking for new social situations that don't trigger your old behaviours.  Your developing new hobbies and habits that don't involve alcohol.  Your avoiding situations that you used to revel in. Your trying to prevent a relapse. These stages of change are for the addict.

6)Relapse Some people never have a relapse, most do.  It is best not to beat yourself up if this happens.  Try to view it as a normal part of the change process and learn from it.  If it turns out meeting with your old army buddies leads to alcohol consumption don't meet with them.  Or, meet with them one on one.  Or meet with them in an environment where there isn't alcohol.  Hell, just tell them alcohol is messing up your life and you need to stay away from it.  You'd be surprised at how many people are very supportive. At any rate, develop new tactics to overcome whatever caused your relapse.

7)Termination This is where you are no longer actively in maintenance.  You've given up your scandalous ways and moved on toot hers.  Your old habits have been replaced by new ones.  In short, you've got a new life and your leading it. For alcoholism's stages of change there is no time frame.  It can take a year or it can take ten.  People have relapsed after ten or fifteen years.  It isn't common to relapse after that long but, it can happen.  Most relapses happen in the first year or so.

Raging Alcoholic