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Alcohol Is Lying to You
Paperback
Publisher: Ian Bates
Published: Aug 12 2026
Pages: 284
Weight: 0.84
Height: 0.60 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Alcohol Is Lying to You The Myths, Lies, and Social Scripts That Keep You Drinking-and How to See Through Them
Alcohol has never been sold to you as alcohol.
It's been sold as confidence. As relaxation. As friendship in a glass, courage in a bottle, elegance at dinner, and freedom on holiday. For your entire adult life, it has stood next to the things you actually want-connection, relief, celebration, belonging-and quietly taken credit for them.
It didn't create any of that. It just learned how to attach itself to it.
In Alcohol Is Lying to You, counselor and hypnotherapist Ian Bates pulls apart the twenty-seven lies that keep otherwise smart, self-aware people pouring a drink they've started to question. Not with shame. Not with scare tactics. With a clear, patient look at exactly how the story was built-and exactly how it falls apart once you see it.
Inside, you'll take apart:
- The Relaxation Lie - why alcohol doesn't calm you down, it just interrupts the anxiety it helped create
- The Moderation Lie - the quiet math of just one and why it rarely stays that way
- The Comparison Lie - how at least I'm not as bad as... keeps you exactly where you are
- The Health Lie, the Mental Health Lie, and the Memory and Behavior Lie - what the drink actually does long after the buzz fades
- The Industry Lie and the Advertising Lie - who profits from the story, and why it was never written with your best interests in mind
- The Identity Lie - the quiet fear that without the drink, there's no you left underneath
Chapter by chapter, Bates dismantles the scripts-cultural, commercial, and deeply personal-that make alcohol feel less like a choice and more like a given. This isn't a recovery manual or a rulebook. It's an unflinching, page-by-page unmasking of the most convincing lie most of us never think to question.
If you've ever had the quiet thought that something doesn't add up-that the drink promises more than it delivers, and costs more than it admits-this book will put words to it.
You don't have to decide anything yet. You just have to see it clearly.
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