Alcohol abuse wreaks havoc on family dynamics. My grandfather was an alcoholic and the entire system was bent and twisted around his daily need for beer. Yet we never talked about this problem. It was not a secret, but it also was not something that the family members were ever supposed to talk about. Though my dad was well-aware that his dad was an alcoholic, my mom often told me about how Dad wouldn’t talk to her or listen to her concerns about the problem. She worried, for example, about my grandpa taking my brother and me somewhere in the car as little kids while he was drunk, but my dad didn’t want to discuss it with my mom and he certainly didn’t want to talk to his parents about the problem.
In a family with one or more members with alcohol use disorder, the need for alcohol is central and other needs are secondary. There is also a need to hide the dynamic of the family to the outside world which creates additional stress. Within the family itself, the dynamics are altered in a negative way by the ongoing issues that develop as a result of the alcohol abuse. But alcohol abuse also develops as a result of pre-existing issues in the family and in the ancestry.
Alcoholism gets passed down in families. While conventional medicine says that alcohol abuse is passed down through “genetics”, this idea breaks down if you study genetics and understand that genes can be “switched on” or “switched off” to skip generations or certain branches of the family tree. The question then becomes, how do we switch off the genes for alcohol use disorder? To say that “genetics” cause alcohol use disorder is a way of saying (or trying to say) that alcoholism is an unsolvable, if not a mystical problem.
Alcoholics and loved ones of alcoholics work The System in the hopes that The System will work for them. Alcoholics end up in rehab facilities that cost a lot of money but that offer little hope and nothing but high relapse rates. Psychiatrists prescribe addictive substances like Naltrexone as the only viable option for had-core alcohol abuse, yet Naltrexone itself is a dangerous drug. This paradigm in conventional medicine is a massive tragedy because there are ways to cure alcoholism without Naltrexone or rehab.
Is there an herbal remedy to reduce alcohol consumption?
First and foremost, there are powerful herbal remedies for alcohol addiction that work by reducing insulin resistance that drives alcohol addiction and improving glucagon functioning in the body. Lydian and I help people stop drinking without rehab by recommending specific herbs that make a big impact on how the body is responding to alcohol. Sometimes people come to Mexico to work with us directly, but often, we can help people source what they need in their home country so that the family can work together to overcome alcohol addiction at home.
The herbs that we recommend include:
- Pueraria lobata / Kudzu
- Momordica charantia / Bitter melon
- Melissa officinalis / Lemon Balm
- Passiflora incarnata / Passionflower
- Garcinia kola / Bitter Kola Nut
Of all of these herbs, Pueraria lobata is the plant with the most scientific support as a medicinal herb that causes people to drink significantly less even if they don’t intend to stop drinking. But the other herbs in this list help the body produce insulin and promote proper glucagon function too such that the alcoholic experiences fewer cravings and more control over their behavior in regard to alcohol.
These herbs in the list above, help alcoholics gain control over their physiological need for alcohol, but in order to fully overcome alcoholism and the family patterns that develop around alcohol abuse, the sacred indigenous medicines are essential.
Most people find our information about how to overcome alcohol addiction when they’ve tried everything else with no success. Someone, a doctor, a psychiatrist, a rehab “specialist”, or some other “authority figure”, proclaims that all hope is lost and that causes people to look beyond The System to find out how people cure alcoholism in real life. There are ways to do it that are less dangerous than Naltrexone and significantly more effective than alcohol rehab. Alcohol addiction, after all, has been a problem ever since humans learned how to ferment food. So how have humans survived for so many thousands of years despite this problem?
There are several sacred indigenous medicines that are specifically used to treat alcohol addiction. These medicines are “sacred” in that they can speak directly to a person who takes them, like an Inner Counselor who knows that person in a very intimate and personal way. They have the ability to heal the body, the mind, and the emotions in just one treatment. That’s why they’re considered sacred. The sacred medicines been used in tribal societies since the dawn of time and when used properly, they produce miraculous results in the treatment of addictions.
If you’ve never worked with the sacred medicines, we can train you either in person or online how to use them properly to overcome alcohol addiction.
Sacred Indigenous Medicines for Alcohol Addiction
For alcohol addiction, the following sacred indigenous medicines are the most important because of their scientifically proven ability to heal the beta- and alpha-cells in the pancreas among other things. For someone with an alcohol addiction, healing the beta cells means healing the body’s ability to release insulin, directly reducing the body’s need for alcohol. And healing the alpha-cells is all about improving the production and release of glucagon, a hormone that works in tandem with insulin to keep blood sugar levels within a comfortable, normal range. The sacred indigenous medicines that work best to treat alcohol addiction in the early stages of treatment include:
- Ayahuasca
- Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis brews might be used initially to produce a purge to clean and heal the liver.
- Peganum harmala and Mimosa hostilis Ayahuasca brews might be used after the first 2-3 trips so as to produce a more powerful healing effect on the beta and alpha cells in the pancreas.
- Psilocybin Mushrooms
- Psilocybin “trips” in a ceremonial setting is powerful in terms of its ability to release the underlying trauma that causes alcohol abuse behaviors.
- Sapito
- Sapito is a frog venom that smoked to produce a “trip”, but this frog venom heals the brain and the body through the administration of 5-MeO-DMT.
- Sacred, Wild Forms of Tobacco in Ceremonial Settings
- Certain forms of wild Tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) as Rápeh or Ambil are used to remove negative energies and spiritual intrusions prior or during ceremonies using other sacred indigenous medicines.
Not all of these medicines are available in every country of the world, but Lydian and I have done a lot of traveling in our lives. Our goal is always to help people solve problems for themselves. We know that if a family member is struggling with alcoholism, there are often terms and conditions on what the alcoholic is willing to do or willing to try. So we work with families, loved ones, and the alcoholic himself or herself, to come up with a workable plan to get started with healing. Once the process is initiated, the alcoholic and the family system will reach new plateaus as the work progresses and then we help work out the kinks in terms of what the system needs.
Heal the Individual and Then Heal the Family
I have a master’s degree in family psychology and I spent years working with families that were in turmoil back in the United States. Nothing I learned in my degree program, however, has ever really helped me heal a family. I have used my degree as a source of vocabulary to be able to communicate with people about certain concepts in disturbed family systems, but the sacred indigenous medicines were the thing that helped me and my family heal ourselves despite the problem of addiction in our family. So when Lydian and I work with people directly, and once the alcoholic gets past their initial trauma-work inside of themselves, we view an individual’s problem in terms of the family system and their ancestry.
Family members are often wounded or, in any case, they’ve been taught to keep their lives and their problems secret. There’s a huge burden on the family system to figure out how to love this person, the addict, who has hurt them deeply. To release these wounds, the family works in a specific way with each other and sometimes as separate individuals to release the trauma, not just pertaining to their personal experience, but also in terms of their ancestry.
The ancestral work is often more important than people realize when they first arrive to begin their work with us. Most people don’t realize how their ancestors “dance them” on a daily basis through the stories from the past. Always, the stories that are being told through the cycle of addiction involve secrets – they are the stories that were never told and that went to the grave as a secret. In order to release these stories, the family members take the sacred medicines to “pass the stories through” their bodies and into their conscious minds. The retelling of the story within the family system such that the story becomes conscious, is often enough to release it permanently and put it to rest.
To overcome disturbances in a family system is a big job and the more people who are willing to be involved in the process, the better. But even if a person with alcohol addiction arrives as an individual who is in exile from their family, that individual can ask the sacred medicines what to do and what direction to take in order to heal their family.
In any case, the idea that you can heal your family after it has been through something really painful and perhaps even shameful, is real. As humans, we were designed to heal. Our bodies and our minds were designed with built in faculties that can be used intentionally to heal ourselves. Our families were designed to be able to make peace and be able to restore balance after major challenges. We don’t need all of the diagnostic labels and prescription drugs to overcome what we face.
That being said, there are two sacred medicines that are particularly useful to us when we work with couples or families that are trying to heal after alcoholism has been a part of their system:
- Iboga
- San Pedro
Iboga is not something that we often recommend for alcoholism because alcoholism is more responsive to medicines that heal the pancreas, liver, and gallbladder to produce a better insulin-glucagon response. However, in people who grew up in an environment of neglect as children, or in those with attachment disorders, we recommend working with iboga as a way to reweave the fabric of how relationships and boundaries are navigated.
Iboga is expensive and most people with attachment disorder and alcoholism need more than just one or two iboga trips to release their trauma and overcome addictive behaviors. An alternative that we recommend, however, is San Pedro, a mescaline-containing cactus that produces different effects depending on the dose.
San Pedro to Heal a Family
San Pedro can be given in low to moderate or even high doses to produce a different experience. This plant-medicine produces a long-trip that lasts between 20-30 hours, similar to the amount of time it takes to do an iboga trip. However, San Pedro works very differently from the Iboga to heal addictions. We recommend it most often when people have trouble making close relationships as a result of an attachment disorder though it is also extremely useful as an alternative to MDMA for couples counseling. San Pedro allows you to unfold patterned arguments so that you can say what you really mean and be heard and felt by the other party.
In low doses, San Pedro is good medicine for couples who have trouble resolving their fights even though they love each other. But San Pedro can also be taken by a group of family members to resolve long-standing issues.
Summary
San Pedro is a medicine that we often recommend that people work with after they’ve done work with other sacred medicines like Ayahuasca or psilocybin. In some cases though, San Pedro can be administered to overcome attachment disorder or other serious issues in relationships.