Change Your Drinking This New Year With a Radical New Approach

Dec. 30, 2007 - PRLog -- Change Your Drinking This New Year With a Radical New Approach

New York, NY

Many people suffer from hangovers, missed work, DWI, job loss and even death as a result of their use of alcohol.  Every New Year's untold numbers of Americans resolve to change their drinking for the better. The only approach most Americans are aware of is total abstinence and lifelong attendance at AA. But is this abstinence only approach effective? According to AA’s own Triennial Surveys 95% of new AA members drop out at the end of the first years (http://www.rational.org/html_public_area/harvard.html)

Kenneth Anderson of The HAMS Harm Reduction Network says that there is a different approach available for people who drink alcohol: the approach or Harm Reduction.  Harm Reduction has been pioneered with great success among injection drug users and Mr. Anderson believes that it is time that the Harm Reduction approach was made available to people who drink alcohol as well.

Attempts to fight the spread of HIV by encouraging total abstinence among injection drug users have met with a notable lack of success. However, Harm Reduction strategies which give IV drug users access to clean needles, information, and support groups have proven highly effective (http://www.soros.org/Staging/initiatives/health/focus/ihr...).

Mr. Anderson says that the only reasonable strategy to combat the epidemic of harm resulting form the use of alcohol--which ranges from hangovers to missed work to DWI to job loss to death or involuntary manslaughter--is a Harm Reduction approach.

The acronym HAMS stands for Harm reduction, Abstinence and Moderation Support. The HAMS Harm Reduction Network is the first support group for drinkers with a Harm Reduction focus. Mr. Anderson assures us that the successes of members of HAMS in improving their drinking have been outstanding and that many members who initially joined with a goal of Harm Reduction or Moderation have now chosen Abstinence and are succeeding in abstaining from alcohol for the first time in their lives.

If one wishes to change their drinking for the better this New Year's, The HAMS Harm Reduction Network might just be the right place to do so.

For more information:

Contact: Kenneth Anderson
Email: hams@hamshrn.org
Tel: 347-678-5671
http://hamsnetwork.org

Website: hamsnetwork.org