People Drink for a Reason
Brian Murphy

“Before they die, everyone should figure out what they are running from, and to, and why.”
James Thurber

How many times have you seen someone firmly resolve to do something that’s very good for them and not long after do the exact opposite? We make up our minds to confront a lover, ask the boss for a raise, or just clean the apartment and write some bills, and at the end of the day the lover stays unconfronted, the bills are unwritten, and the boss still hasn’t noticed we were there. And of course it’s the same with drinking. You stare at the 6-pack in your hand, wondering how exactly it got there after all your pious resolutions, or by the sixth or seventh drink in a bar, you remember you had said it wasn’t going to be that kind of night this time.

We like to explain this away as laziness, fear, self-indulgence, or any other human shortcoming, but really we don’t know why we do what we do. As anyone who has been on a diet can attest, we can no more predict our future behaviors than we can the weather. Our inner dynamics appear to play out their dramas without having to ask our permission or even show us their rule book. We can influence our moods and behaviors, but strange to say, they often have an uncomfortably independent life of their own.

When it comes to drinking, the popular explanation in our culture is that heavy drinkers suffer from the disease of alcoholism, and that a feature of this disease is a loss of control. But that only begs the question why? It’s very hard to believe that millions of people have a mystery behavioral disease for which there is no cure, and the only treatment is lifelong abstinence. Common sense and a great deal of research tell us that plenty of people move from problem drinking to moderate drinking all the time . So when our own weird behaviors confound us, it’s good if we can get interested in the inner dynamics that are presumably connected with the cause. Our problem behaviors are not just warts that need eliminating, they are barometers of how much attention we need to give to our inside lives.

If you are involved in moderation management, or are exploring it, you probably share some of this skepticism about our culture’s disease model and insistence on abstinence. Probably this theory says more about the particular assumptions and values of our time and place culture than it does about how a human actually work. But even if you are a skeptic, it is hard to get the basic template of received ideas out of your head if there’s nothing to replace it with. That’s very bad if, as in this case, the received ideas are in serious conflict with the course that you want to pursue. If you are not content with society’s standard issue of ideas, you will need an alternative model to work with.

As Thoreau said:
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

The ideas in this essay offer a different kind of music and a different drum. I believe these ideas are more humane and more practical than disease model precepts, and that they are also a valuable guide to that rulebook of how we work inside. I’ll begin by looking at drinking as a coping mechanism for bad feelings; then I’ll go to the inner dynamics that make us want to drink, and finally there are some exercises you may find useful in working on problem drinking.

A Coping Mechanism
I’m gonna drink away
The part of the day I cannot think away.

The coping mechanism model almost explains itself: Problem drinkers drink because they have problems. Bad things happen to us in life, and those bad events generate bad feelings, like fear, rage, a sense of worthlessness and so on. Our first and most automatic line of defense against bad feelings is to try to block them out. This works the same way as taking an aspirin when you have a toothache – the aspirin will not cure the toothache, but you do hope it will make it more bearable. Aspirin is the coping mechanism for toothache, but the cure is to go to the dentist. Drinking is the coping mechanism for emotional pain -- it gets us through the night. The cure, we will talk about later.

So behaviors that the conventional model calls addiction are seen by this harm reduction-based model as a coping mechanism for bad feelings. We do a stunning variety of activities in our culture just to manage bad feelings: we drink, do drugs, over-eat, spend hours in front of the TV, or computer, or the game boy, gamble, do a little retail therapy and so on, all in an effort to not feel something. I’m not saying that every time we drink or watch the TV we do this, but when an activity has a compulsive quality to it, a coping mechanism is probably involved. Alcohol is an especially good coping mechanism because it alters your awareness and your mood. But anything that successfully distracts you, or numbs you, or focuses your attention elsewhere, will work. It is as instinctive as flinching from a blow. Pain comes, and the system responds.

Don’t Take Away my Coping Mechanism!

Imagine someone who lives in a house that has a dark basement with poisonous snakes in it. A violent storm is approaching the house, spawning tornadoes as it comes. The person has to decide, should I go down in the unlit basement where I am safest from the storm, or should I take my chances upstairs? If you think of the storm as bad feelings, then the basement is the coping mechanism. It can function as a place of safety, but it also carries its own serious dangers. People make their judgement calls based on their best guess of where the greatest danger lies. Your crazy may be my safety first, depending on what is going on inside of us.

An example: A person I worked with in therapy has been in AA for many years, and totally subscribed to the addiction theory. But she once surprised me by saying that drinking had saved her life. At the time when she drank heavily she was so consumed by depression and a sense of worthlessness that she would easily have killed herself had the drink not been there to give her relief once in a while. She was under no illusions about the value of alcohol as a long-term mood stabilizer, but like the person with the unlit basement, she made her best call in a difficult situation. She then gave up drinking when she could, as best she could.

Another woman I worked with drank every night after she put the children to bed, and although she felt very frustrated with the fact that she was putting her life on hold, she wasn’t able to change this pattern. As she looked more closely at her inner dynamic, it turned out that her drinking represented a compromise between two deeply polarized parts of herself. One part felt shackled by her domestic life. It wanted to socialize, go to school, and possibly pursue an artistic career. The other part was invested totally in her being a good mother, and saw these desires as something that could ruin her marriage and compromise her life as a parent. Better, this part reasoned, to drink every night until she was unable to properly function, stifle her longings, and be a decent parent again in the morning. When she looked at this polarization, she became ready to negotiate these parts away from their extremity, so that she could go to classes, socialize, and reach beyond the either/or dichotomy between family and fulfillment.

Our culture’s current popular view is that since problem drinking is bad, the only way to deal with it is to have the drinker abstain. Countless examples like the ones above tell us that it is not so simple. I am not saying that problem drinking is safe or desirable, but I am saying that if we want to get a handle on this or any other ‘addiction,’ we need to get interested in its context. Our coping mechanisms are there for a reason, and we need to know about those reasons if we are going to deal with ourselves humanely and effectively. I am told there is a Chinese saying which goes, never wrestle with pigs – you will just get dirty, and the pigs will love it. How many of us have fruitlessly wriggled in the dirt with our coping mechanisms and come away from the battle with nothing more than mud in our eye? Until the part of us that needs to drink gets truly convinced that there is a better way, it will cling to its habits with all the tenacity a human being can muster. And if, by chance we do wrestle that pig to the ground, we may regret facing the storm of emotion that results from our coping mechanism being taken away before its time.

Does this mean we are in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ kind of situation with drinking? Not at all, and this is why the moderation approach can be such a Godsend. When I get interested in the way my drinking functions as part of an emotional system I can start to have more influence over the what, the where and the how of it. And when I better understand my drinking I can make a more informed decision about how I want to moderate or if I chose to take it to zero for a while. It’s better than floundering, or becoming a 12-step fanatic, and it’s also good to learn more about the world’s most fascinating and engaging subject – me.

What to do? The techniques of moderation management offer a common sense way to make your coping mechanism of drinking as non-intrusive and low-risk as possible. In the image of the house in the storm, these methods are about making that basement as safe and secure as possible. There are several excellent books about this, and they are all mentioned at this site, but I would single out Over the Influence by Pat Denning, Jeannie Little and Adina Glickman, and Responsible Drinking by Fred Rotgers, Marc Kern and Rudy Hoeltzel. These books help you make smart and effective negotiations with your coping mechanisms. Keeping logs, drinking on a full stomach, planning to limit your number of drinks and so on, are all ways to let the coping mechanism of drinking do its work at the least possible cost to yourself and those around you. This work is extremely important, and nothing could be better recommended, but if you have tried these cognitive/behavioral techniques for a while and the success has been limited, you may want to supplement your moderation techniques with some healing work. To use the house in a storm metaphor again – if you’ve fixed up the basement as best you can and the problem is still there, it may be time to address the emotional storm.

Internal Family Systems Therapy.
The coping mechanism model takes a systems approach towards the behavior of heavy drinking. Internal family systems therapy (IFS) looks at that system in terms of our internal ‘family,’ of parts. This model comes out of conventional family therapy, where attention is focused on making sure that the individuals within a family communicate clearly with one another, and without interruption from other family members. In IFS we get interested in the same process within an individual. We do not just look at ‘emotional pain’ or ‘bad feelings,’ but at the parts of ourselves that have to carry that burden of pain. And instead of ‘coping mechanisms’ we look at the parts of ourselves that take on the role of protecting the pain-carrying parts.
An example – Charles grew up in a working class suburban where his gay lifestyle and artistic nature were not appreciated or understood. Not only that, his family came from conservative religious roots that saw his sexual orientation as literally the route to the fires of Hell. From this came painful and humiliating experiences that generated a number of pain-bearing parts which, in IFS language are called exiles. Exiles are usually young parts that get frozen at the point where painful experiences happens. I am, say, five years old, I get hurt or rejected or humiliated, I’m not given an opportunity to recover from that experience, and a part of me gets frozen in time, living in that same psychological space, until I am able to release it later in life.
As I suggested above, the system tends to stuff these parts deep inside ourselves, not just in order to keep them safe from further onslaughts, but also to keep their highly charged and scary energy isolated from the rest of the system. People often feel the exiles’ energy as frightening and overwhelming, and stay away from it, not knowing that behind the eruptions of rage or despair are little child-like parts that need our concern, comforting, and kind attention.

So Charles, like the rest of us in humanity, evolved other parts to step in and protect the wounds of these exiled parts. We tend to create recognizable protective types that bear common characteristics from person to person. For instance, there are parts that like to manage the outside world and get all their ducks in a row, so that nothing bad will happen. Anything less than that and they will feel jittery and unsafe. Critical parts lambaste others, or oneself, for imperfections, in an effort to put the situation above all criticism from others, and once again make things safe.

Another recognizable inner character is a part that wants to make nice to people and be accepted, even at a high price. Charles has a part like this that he calls the Traditionalist. This part wants to fit in with his family and also with the guys that he works with, even though they have moments where they are repulsively racist and homophobic. In its belief system, this part would have Charles just live at home, keep his head down, and stay safe.

Charles has his fair share of these safety-seeking parts competing for the space in his head, but he also has another part that works in a very different way. Deeply polarized against the Traditionalist is a part that he calls Friend of Hustlers. Friend of Hustlers has led Charles into a dangerous lifestyle where he hangs out with street hustlers in the City, drinking heavily and doing drugs. Charles battled hard with this part, since it literally had the potential to cost him his life, but as in the ‘wrestling with pigs’ saying, Friend of Hustlers did not seem to be fazed by these battles, and at one point Charles became homeless and on the streets on the other side of the country.

In therapy, Charles became interested in the evolution of Friend of Hustlers. Earlier in his life Charles had struggled against the smothering influence of the safety-seeking Traditionalist, and had begun to develop a career as a musician while living as an openly gay man in a liberal and free-thinking environment. But when this life became at last truly realizable, the Traditionalist stepped in and was instrumental in ending the career and relationship, and having him move back in with his family.

The inner rebellion immediately became more defiant and desperate. Charles sought out other people with a ‘what the fuck’ attitude, and found the hustlers in the City. This is when Friend of Hustlers was born, pressing him to drink heavily, do drugs and take foolish risks. It did not take particular pleasure in the sleazy nightlife, but it believed that if Charles’ true spirit was going to be destroyed by stifling conventionality, then it would be better to burn bright and die fast, better to go out with a bang than a whimper.

If the Traditionalist type of parts finds comfort and safety in keeping the environment safely under control, the Friend of Hustlers type finds comfort and safety from going out of control, and it’s this kind of part that is often involved in activities often get called ‘addictions’. In the IFS model, the so-called addictions are not primary diseases, but activities of parts that function as protectors for other, incredibly vulnerable and tender parts. These protectors parts often see their apparently self-destructive behaviors as the best in a menu of very, very bad choices.

It’s hard to get these kinds of parts to sign on to even the most reasonable program of moderation or abstinence, because they are often angry, desperate, and are identified with whatever is unreasonable. In IFS we don’t vindicate these parts, nor do we don’t vilify them (as the conventional model tends to do). We get to see them as good parts of ourselves stuck in bad roles. The work in IFS is to communicate with these parts from a standpoint of compassion and genuine interest, and to ‘get it’ why they have to contort themselves into such strange and compulsive stances. This compassionate stance applies just as much to the Traditionalist, a part that experienced so much rejection, misunderstanding and isolation that it had to kill Charles’ very spirit in order to keep him alive at all.

Today, Friend of Hustlers has been willing to cut back on his activities considerably, but only as an act of faith that its new-found trust in Charles’ self-leadership will produce some better options. Charles is also listening with a new ear to the story of pain and tribulation coming from the Traditionalist. That one also, will need to have good reasons to trust Charles and believe that there are less extreme ways of defending his most tender and wounded parts. As Charles begins to heal those exiles, some of the extremity will be released from his system, and he will be more able to honor his sexuality and his artistic side without such a huge fear of stigma, rejection and humiliation. As this happens the dynamic that creates his extreme drinking will lose some steam. Abstaining, or moderating his alcohol use are issues that will leave the arena of compulsivity and become what they should be – his choice.

The Self: When I say that ‘I’ listen to ‘my’ parts, who is the ‘I’ that is doing the listening? If this ‘I’ is another part, it will inevitably have its own protective role and limited perspective, and not really be in a position to give good healing. What can?
The answer IFS offers is that healing is done by the very core of our identity, or the self. What IFS language calls the self is the true, deep, natural leader in me that has never acquired a role, good or bad. As the center of my identity, it has the power to inform my many parts with a nonjudgmental and affirming energy. It is what the poet W.B. Yeats called ‘the face we wore before the world began.’ We can feel self energy when our hearts melt in the presence of an infant, or in a beautiful natural setting that, momentarily at least, takes us ‘out of our head’ or when we are with people where we feel love, community and accord. This state is spacious and ‘larger than me,’ and at the same time the most deeply personal experience I can have. When all is said and done, it is experience of the self that we long for in life, more than status, neat gadgetry or approval.
Parts heal by their exposure to self energy. By being an open and loving listener to the stories parts tell of just how bad it was for them, and by withstanding the emotional storms of the parts, the Self does its healing work. Self takes on the protective and comforting role of the adult who should have been there for the part when pain was first pumped into the system. Once the self has sufficiently witnessed the little one’s story, exiled parts can usually unburden from the bad feelings and memories that have been causing so much pain for such a long time. Not only is the person less pained and distressed, the youthful and creative energy that was bound up in the exile is now available to the whole system. The person who was drinking heavily to mask their pain now has no reason to put themselves through that clumsy pain management system. They are, in AA terminology more able to take on the challenge of ‘living life on life’s terms.’

Experience the Part, Experience the Self.
The ancient Greek motto is ‘know thyself,’ but no-one along the way seems to have taken much time to show us how exactly to do this. The methods of IFS are one way of learning more about ourselves as part of the process of change, and the exercises below are practical ways to do this. All of our emotions live inside us, so it makes sense to ‘go inside’ reach a place of healing. Some people will close their eyes, others just stare off in space; some experience the sensations in their bodies strongly while others see visual images, and others (like myself) just have a sense that a part is there. All you really need to know about going inside is that you are paying attention to your inner life instead of the outside world and relationships. So while you do this find a quiet and comfortable place to sit.

Before we go further though, I want to address a possible concern. Some people, initially, feel disconcerted by parts language. Am I being invited to go crazy, you may ask, and the answer is no, nobody is inviting you to turn into a multiple personality. The language of parts simply reflects our a natural inner multiplicity and is nothing more than a useful way of sorting out our many and various thoughts and feelings. It’s like the time when my four year-old son had fallen down and I wasn’t good enough to be the one to examine his boo-boo. I asked him if he wanted his mother to come over and take a look. “Well daddy, some of me wants her to come and some of me doesn’t, but right now they’re arguing,” he said.

If, however, you have a history of psychiatric hospitalizations, or have psychiatric concerns, I do not recommend that you go ahead with these exercises without the help of a trained IFS therapist who can bring additional Self energy to the situation. A list of such therapists can be found at the IFS website mentioned at the end of this article.

Parts operate in layers. For instance, if I asked you to access the part of you that wants to drink, you might be able to do so right away. Or, you might find that what you encounter is a part that is polarized with the Drinking Part, as Charles’ Traditionalist part was polarized with the Friend of Hustlers. Or again, you might encounter a very business-like part that zealously wants to fix things at a rapid speed; or one that feels skeptical or uncomfortable about doing the exercise at all; or one who thinks that while others may be able to do these exercises, you are fated to get it all wrong. All these parts are there for a reason, and it’s your work, as well as you are able, to find a place of Self where you can listen to them with compassion and active interest.

It can feel like being in a room with 18 people competing for your attention and trying to yell over one another. Or, possibly, it can feel like there is nothing in there. This sometimes happens when your parts are not used to being noticed by you, and are rather suspicious and taken aback. They usually get over this after a little while. In these exercises you will work to hear the parts as parts, and respectfully negotiate with them to a place of clearer, more productive communication. This work is the operationalizing of ‘know thyself.’

Exercise 1: Exploring Part that are to do with Drinking
This exercise is about finding out more about yourself and how your inner system is constructed in relation to drinking. It works like a decision tree, so begin by reading the whole exercise to get a sense of the different kinds of parts that may surface. When you are in touch with a part that seems in some ways to match one of the parts listed below, you can read that place in the text to get ideas on what to do next.

Part of the purpose here is to get to know the Drinking Part especially well, and to work with it until it does not have the same need for heavy drinking. But you cannot measure success by how quickly to ‘reach’ or interact with this part. Very often parts like this are surrounded by powerful and deeply conflicted feelings that have been in place a long time, and are not going away just on our say-so. Notions of the success/failure ideology are less useful in the inside world than just getting to know everybody. So let the part that needs the most attention get the most attention.

Sit in a comfortable place, relax your muscles and breathe easily. Feel the inside life of your body and see if you can find the part of you that wants to drink in an out of control way. Do you get a good sense of it? Does it feel like an autonomous part of you with its own concerns, fears and agenda? If so, go straight to the ‘Drinking Part’ below. If your sense of that part feels fuzzy, interrupted or not there at all, another part, perhaps among the ones listed below, will need some attention first. Go to the part that seems right.

The Skeptic
It may be that you encounter a feeling that doing this is weird and freaky, and that it’s best to forget the whole idea, or do it some later date. Remind this part that the weirdest thing you are doing right now is drinking in amounts that make no sense, and that this exercise is about finding out more about that. Ask this part what it is concerned may happen if you do ‘go inside,’ and if you are able to hear those fears, see if you can give some genuine reassurance. One thing you can remind this part is that not very much can go wrong by doing this. Really listen to this one for a while, it often has valuable things to tell you. If the part can suspend its skepticism for a while and give you access to the Drinking Part, that’s great. If that’s really not going to happen today spend more time with this part, learning about its concerns and beliefs.

The Non-Confident Part
You may find that a part of you holds the belief that you are not suited to going inside, you don’t have a talent for this, and that there is no point in continuing because you’ll never be able to get it right. If you listen to it carefully, this part may sound like a nervous and worried child. If it feels right, treat this part as just that. Go to it with calm and reassurance, and let it know that you are here, you care about it, and want to listen to its worries. Then give that part as much reassurance as it can take in. If its fears are calmed, move on to the Drinking Part. If not, stay with this one – the part needs you.

The Fixer. This kind of part is sometimes hard to recognize, because it genuinely wants to get the job done. The only trouble is that its enthusiasm for results can sometimes get in the way of the process, especially when it comes to reaching parts that are suspicious or withdrawn. The Fixer’s desire for rapid outcomes can sometimes force the process into moving faster than it really can, making for false or non-lasting resolutions. So if you sense that this one is around ask it to trust in you enough to go against the grain and become an observer instead of a player. You can only have one inner conversation at a time, and right now you would like to give that headspace to the Drinking One. If it is not the right time for that, get to know more about why the Fixer has to do its fixing job.

Polarized Parts. You may find that you have parts that are essentially at war with Drinking Part. There may be an Inner Critic that responds to your drinking with fierce condemnation; another part might fill you with overwhelming fear at the prospect of getting close to the Drinking Part, while other polarized parts may carry strong feelings of frustration or anxiety – anything that is a powerful and negative response to the Drinking One.

It’s often good to let these parts know that by going towards the Drinking Part you are not going to let it take over, and you are not taking its side, you are just interested in understanding why it does what it does. Your plan for the Drinking Part is to help it get to a place where it will not need to so active in such an extreme way – which is exactly what these polarized parts want to see happen.

If a polarized part is not ready to let go, respect that. A lot of suffering may surround this issue, and parts may have to spend a long time developing trust in the process. Hang out with these ones, find out more about them, and let them know you are there for them. Let these ones tell you some of their history, why they do what they do, and what they are afraid would happen if they stopped. Let them know that that your work is to make things better for all parts of your system, and that it is absolutely okay if today is not the right time for you to have Drinking Part.

The Drinking Part. And if you reach the Drinking Part, let it know that you are here and that you want to communicate your warm and openhearted presence. See if you can reach a place where most of the feelings and thoughts you have towards this part are calm, compassionate and curious. Ask this part what it wants you to know about itself, what it does for you, why it does it, and what it is afraid would happen if it ever stopped doing its job. Is there anything this part especially wants to tell you about itself, perhaps its history, or a visual image or a physical sensation that most exemplifies it? What do these sensations or feelings say to you?

And finally, to the degree that you have the presence, or Self energy, to have a heart-to-heart talk with this part, ask it, if it were ever free of the role it is in now, what new kind of new role might interest it instead? If the part communicates to you that such a thing could never happen, tell it – if you do feel able to make this commitment – that you are working now towards making changes really possible. To the extent that you have built some trust, ask it to consider again what its ‘dream job’ would be if it could really have one. The answer you get may be an indicator of the direction of your future growth.
Then thank this part for communicating with you. This kind of part so often gets a bashing from other parts, and seldom gets much appreciation from any part of the system.

Other Parts
If the part in front of you doesn’t seem be any of the above, or if you are just confused or unsure, no need for concern. A good deal of parts work follows a similar pattern, so wherever you are at, you can follow this process:

• See if you can get a sense of the part, as a visual image, a bodily sensation, or just a feeling that it ‘is there.’
• If all you are you are feeling is confused and disconnected, treat that feeling as a part, and continue.
• Let the part know that you are there, and that you are curious about it, and (if it’s true) feeling non-judgmental towards it.
• Ask the part what it wants to tell you about itself. What is it afraid would happen if it let you go further inside? Does this part have any strong feelings about drinking?
• Ask the part what its role is inside of you – what’s its job?
• If the part expresses painful, angry or uncomfortable feelings, ask it why it has to be that way.
• If the part could ever switch its role to the ‘dream job’ it would like to do, what would that be?
• Thank the part for communicating with you and let it know that it is appreciated.

Exercise 2: When You Drink
Some highways in America you can get on for free, and at others you have to pay a toll. Quite likely your route to drinking has been of the free type so far, or else the toll has taken the form of fruitless and painful bickering among the parts. You don’t do this exercise in a quiet place, but in throes of life, and the toll you impose is simple and fair. Before you drink, after you have taken the first sip or two, or when you are battling over whether to drink or not, try to bypass the inner warfare for a moment and get a sense the part of your that needs this drink so badly. Don’t condemn it or judge it, just feel it and if you can, let it know that you are there. Give it some calming compassion. Thank the part for having connected with you.
After you have taken your toll you may or may not want a drink, but you will have given yourself the chance to gather some valuable information and begin a relationship with a part that is generally isolated and cast out. This exercise is like letting the prodigal son know that there is a home waiting for him when he is able to find his way there. Sometimes it can, in and of itself, bring calm to compulsive parts and let them not need to drink, or not need to drink so much.

Exercise 3: Experiencing Self Energy
As with the Exercise 1, begin in a quiet place, relax your body and pay attention to your breathing. See if you can recall a time where you have reached that place of spaciousness, peace and enlivened calm we call ‘being in self’. It may have been a moment of spiritual awareness, or a particular memory from childhood, a memory of creative flow, of being among people and feeling at one with them, whatever might give that special feeling. Feel that energy and enjoy it; imagine how it might inform your day to day living.

If a part comes in and diminishes your contact with the self energy, become interested in why the part had to do that, what it was afraid would happen if it did not. Then, if the part can be reassured about its concerns, respectfully return to the place of self. Enjoy that energy for as long as it is there, or until it seems right to move away. Thank the self for giving you this experience. Ask it if there is some healing image it would like to leave you with. If the experience was more with the parts, thank them.

IFS is therapy, and these exercises can’t replace therapy. Especially if you feel the energy of those wounded parts, the exiles, strongly, you may want to consider professional treatment. If, on the other hand, if you are curious about your inner system and are not under the threat of immediate and very powerful negative feelings, these exercises can offer gentle methods for your self-exploration. You will want to do them frequently to come to a consistently better relationship with your insides, but any work in the right direction is good work. Good luck on your journey.
A Last Word

This culture’s conventional treatments for drinking problems too often encourage our already lively self-bashing parts. When you look at the numbers, this approach has not been successful, and on the personal scale it leads to yet more intensified self-bashing, which tends only to drive the drinking parts into further alienation. The work of IFS is to bring all parts more deeply into the circle of the internal family, where acceptance and respect will humanize them and make them less extreme. We live in a world where conflict and intolerance violence are a terrible norm. It’s hard to see how this will ever change until enough individuals, through whatever route they choose, make peace with their inner worlds and selves. I just don’t see any short cuts. But each time we make an effort to reintegrate the sad, angry and dispossessed parts inside of us, we will have made a silent and powerful contribution to the world.

IFS is a therapy/human potential movement that was founded by one man, Richard Schwartz, who works out of the Chicago area. Dick masquerades as a very ordinary, nondescript middle-aged guy. You could very easily pass him by on the street or in a train and never know he was there. But we who have trained with him are not fooled for a moment. He is one of the kindest, gentlest, bravest people I have met, and he takes on the mantle of leadership without apparently knowing it is there. I want to thank him for his shining energy and his kind intelligence.Brian Murphy is a moderation-friendly therapist who practices internal family systems therapy and is based in New York City. If you have questions/thoughts about this article, about drinking, or about IFS, you can reach him at 917 620 7158 or at Murphy5554@aol.com.

The Center for Self Leadership, founded by Dr. Richard Schwartz, is located at PO Box 3969, Oak Park, Illinois, 60303. Phone: (708) 383 2659. You can reach it on the web at www.internalfamilysystems.org or at www.selfleadership.org. Dr. Schwartz conducts trainings in IFS nationally and internationally, and the web site has more information on IFS theory, a list of trainings, and a list of IFS therapists nation-wide.

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