#101 – Mark Holmes: Holmes's Complete Guide To Stop Drinking Alcohol#101 – Mark Holmes: Holmes's Complete Guide To Stop Drinking Alcohol
Recovery Survey
Former principal Mark Holmes talks about thirty years of high-functioning alcoholism, his shift into cognitive behavioural therapy and meditation, and how these tools shaped his approach to stopping drinking. The conversation focuses on beliefs, self-compassion and practical structure rather than sheer willpower.
31:51•16 Feb 2022
How Mark Holmes Stopped Drinking the Easy, Mindful and Pain-Free Way
Episode Overview
- High-functioning alcoholism can hide behind career success, but still drives poor decisions and emotional turmoil.
- Self-deception and blame-shifting are common; recognising this pattern is a key step towards change.
- Cognitive behavioural therapy helps link triggers, beliefs and drinking behaviour, making it easier to change the response instead of just using willpower.
- Meditation and simple breathing exercises can reduce anxiety and cravings, creating space to choose differently.
- Approaching sobriety from self-compassion and planning, rather than self-hatred and rushed quit attempts, increases the chance of lasting change.
“Try and go from a kind of loving kindness point of view. Because if you do it from love for yourself, then it’s going to be a lot more powerful and it’s going to be a lot more permanent.”
Ever wondered what it really looks like to be a “high-functioning alcoholic” for three decades? This conversation with former school principal and CBT therapist Mark Holmes gives a clear, down-to-earth picture. Mark walks through his drinking life in “scores” of twenty years: from chaotic bingeing at university, to using alcohol as a “relief or reward” during stressful teaching days, to a final phase where drinking became automatic and daily.
On the surface he was climbing the ladder from teacher to principal; underneath he was, as he puts it, a “master of self-deception”, endlessly excusing hangovers and bad decisions. You’ll hear how cultural idols – from American frat movies to rock stars and writers like Charles Bukowski – helped normalise heavy drinking for him, and how long it took to admit alcohol really was causing harm.
Mark talks openly about the brutal self-talk that fuelled his drinking: “my internal monologue was always, you know, oh, you’re an idiot… get a grip.” The turning point comes through cognitive behavioural therapy and meditation. Mark breaks down CBT in simple terms, showing how beliefs sit between triggers and actions, and why “the thinking is wronger than the drinking”.
He explains how changing core beliefs about alcohol and learning basic breathing meditation helped quiet anxiety, cravings and that frantic inner voice. Holmes’s book, *Holmes’ Complete Guide to Stop Drinking Alcohol: The Easy, Mindful and Pain-Free Way*, grows out of his own experiment with these tools, combining academic research, self-assessment questionnaires and a Sherlock Holmes–style structure to make sense of why anyone keeps picking up the bottle.
This episode is aimed at people who’ve tried to quit, slipped, and are sick of starting again on “day one”, as well as loved ones who want to understand that struggle. If you’re stuck in that cycle, Mark’s gentle push towards “loving kindness for yourself” might be the nudge you need. So what belief is still convincing you that the answer is at the bottom of a glass?
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