There's a small voice nagging inside the heads of most alcoholics, it's the voice of addiction, and it tells us what we need to hear to keep on pouring in the booze.

• It tells us (in whatever words we like to hear) that alcohol isn’t the problem, the job-wife-neighbors-whatever are the problem, and that good old alcohol is the only real solution.
• It tells us that we don’t have a problem we can’t handle, and if we wanted to quit we could, and that maybe we will someday, but not quite yet, anyway.
• It also reminds us that until we shoot down stiff drink or two, we're just not that interesting. Alcohol, it tells us, makes us funnier, better looking – just plain-old more fun to be around.

Of course, it doesn't, none of this is true - but that's what we believe.

Maybe it did help to some degree once. Maybe a couple of drinks at that party loosened us up enough to relax, to crack a few jokes, to flirt shamelessly – to be the center of attention. Maybe it did, once, have some effects we liked. But we cling to these memories as if they were fact, all the while not noticing that now, we're not funny…we're sloppy. Not noticing that now the only people that really enjoy spending time with us when we're loaded – are just as loaded as we are, and somehow overlooking what alcohol has been doing to our appearance.

I quit drinking, and now, for the most part, I cringe to remember the ass I made of myself, on so so many occasions. I can tell you that a lot of those people observing the spectacle that was me weren't thinking about how debonair and charming I was! Oddly, it wasn't till after I quit drinking that I made this realization.

If you’re an alcoholic, you would be funnier, better company, and surely better looking if you stopped.

That voice inside your head – it's lying.