When I first tried giving up alcohol, I came up with various techniques to help me through the first part of sobriety and I wanted to understand how I ended up the way I did, so in order to understand myself a bit better I decided to write my life story of no more than 10 pages of A4 size paper. I believe that if you want to change your future then it's essential that you understand your past in order to see those pit falls, and when I read it back to myself  I could see the patterns throughout my life that got worse and worse. I could actually pin point my down falls. All of a sudden I seemed to understand myself more. I would definitely recommend to anyone giving up alcohol to do this, it really helped. The idea here is to start writing and don't stop. It doesn't have to be perfect but just a true account of how you ended up with your drink problem. don't even worry about paragraphs, just keep writing until you get to the present day. I started mine from birth. It took me a while to actually sit down and start writing. I couldn't for the life of me find the motivation to start it. What would I put, how do I start it?  but once I put pen to paper, I found a nice pathway through my life, and from then on I couldn't stop writing! I even found myself writing stuff down that even I'd forgot about. But because I was writing my way through my life, it was almost like I was reliving it all over again. You may find as your writing that some parts of your life will make you cry as you relive the emotions through a clear head, and some parts will make you laugh!

I found this method to be very helpful in my quest for giving up alcohol and finally being free. By the time I finished it and read it back to myself a few times it felt like a weight had been lifted. It doesn't matter how you write it or what you use to right it, be it Microsoft office, notepad or the good old fashioned way, there all just as effective.