The classic joke 'Giving up alcohol is easy! I've done it a thousand times!' has more than a grain of truth in it. Stopping drinking after a particularly bad episode, or at a motivated moment really is the easy part. Staying off alcohol - preventing relapse - is the difficult bit.

The simple fact is that after a time it is easy to forget just how bad things had become before you stopped drinking. As with most thing, the pain fades after a while, your reasons feel more distant, and the motivation drops.

Thoughts such as 'a little won't hurt', 'I can manage it now' or 'I deserve it' start to sneak in. And despite all your earlier good intentions, these thoughts seem all too logical.

This is how all addictions work. Your brain has a craving and translates it into thoughts that get around your best defences. As soon as you start to argue with yourself, you are lost. The only way around it is not to listen to those thoughts at all. Simply dismissing them as the manipulative whisperings of alcohol addiction will keep you free of their clutches.

Stay Off Alcohol will strengthen your resolve to keep you free of alcohol and its destructive effects. It will help you reinforce all the reasons you have for remaining free of alcohol just when you need help most.