Simply put, binge drinking is drinking to get drunk - a self-destructive and unrestrained drinking bout.

During the drinking binge the heavily intoxicated drinker ignores responsibilities, squanders money, and engages in all manner of harmful behaviours that may well bring them into contact with the police or emergency services.

Binge drinking is now a problem in many western countries, even though individual countries have different tolerance levels of binge drinkers.

In the United States, binge drinking is the consuming of four or more drinks by a woman, or five or more drinks by a man on an occasion.

In the United Kingdom, binge drinking is commonly defined as consuming 11 or more drinks on an occasion. This is more than double what is considered binge drinking in the USA - yet binge drinking in the United Kingdom is now so serious; the British Government is about to bring in measures to tackle the problem.

What’s the problem?

Binge drinking is irresponsible; heavy drinking that often comes under the disguise of fun and games. Binge drinking is terribly dangerous to the drinker and to the people around them.

Risks to the binge drinker include:

· Missing work

· Damaging property

· Engaging in unplanned sexual activity

· Not using protection when having sex

· Driving a car after drinking

· Getting into trouble with the police

· Getting hurt or injured

· Alcohol poisoning - a severe and potentially fatal physical reaction to an alcohol overdose.

Risks to people around binge drinkers:

· Having leisure time or sleep interrupted

· Being insulted or humiliated

· Having a serious argument

· Having property damaged

· Being pushed, hit or assaulted

· Experiencing an unwanted sexual advances or assault

Why do they do it?

· To get drunk

· Status associated with drinking

· Culture of alcohol consumption

· Peer pressure

· Stress

Do you have a binge-drinking problem?

Do you recognise either of these harmful and destructive behaviours in your own life?

· Are you drinking more heavily and more often?

· Are you drinking to "get drunk"

· Is your drinking affecting your work or upsetting your partner or family?

What to do?

Luckily, there’s an effective solution to binge drinking - Hypnotherapy and NLP.

We all tend to be miss-programmed by negative input in some way and neuro-linguistic programming reprograms the mind for a positive outcome.

Hypnotherapy puts the mind in a state that will accept the NLP re-programming more readily, so NLP and hypnotherapy combined are a very effective combination.

By using a combination of hypnotherapy and NLP, you can re-program your binge drinking behaviour in a few hours.

You can stop binge drinking by re-programming your brain - you can get a trained hypnotherapist to do this, or you can do-it-yourself by using a self-help download.

Either way the result is the same - to change your usual self-destructive "drink to get drunk" activities to a pleasant "have a few drinks and have a good time".

It’s a matter of self-control, and there are neuro-linguistic and hypnotherapy techniques that create a sequence of thinking that get the brain to move from the thought of drinking to excess to the thought of just having a moderate amount of drinks and enjoying yourself.