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Bottled Up
 
Support for people living with a problem drinker

The Authors
Lou and John are a married couple.  John married Lou (a widow) in 2008.  Both have experienced drinking problems in previous relationships and bring this knowledge to the website and the associated seminars and workshops.  Between them they have, if not an unique experience then certainly a highly appropriate background.  Lou is a counsellor with a private practice.  She also has first-hand experience of alcohol abuse and its effects in her own family.  John has now been clean and sober for 25 years and has been involved in teaching and organising treatment for almost as long.

Below is a brief introduction to the authors but you will discover much more about them inside the member's section as you interact with them.
Lou Lewis

Lou is a classically trained musician, a graduate of the Royal College of Music, London.  She is a singer / songwriter who has made 7 albums and toured the UK, USA and South Africa giving concerts and workshops. 

Her autobiography, No Easy Answers, was a moving and revealing book described as "Giving hope to those suffering from deep emotional problems and encouragement to friends who try to help them." and was frequently used as a reference book for counsellors.

Currently Lou has her own flourishing counselling practice where she sees clients with a variety of issues, including relationship problems.
John McMahon

John is a PhD in psychology.  He has practised as a therapist and has designed and run treatment programs for addiction problems. Until recently he was lead author of and senior lecturer on the largest Master's level course on alcohol and drugs in the UK.  This course was designed for addiction counsellors, psychologists and GP's. 

He has carried out research, mainly on behaviour change in addictive behaviours and binge drinking, and has published widely and spoken at many conferences, both national and international.

More recently he designed and built an award winning self-help website for people with drinking problems - 24/7 Help Yourself. 

John has been clean and sober for 25 years now, but had a severe substance abuse problem.
Accompanying this website Lou and John will be leading seminars and workshops around the UK and possibly in other countries.  There are two types of seminar/workshops planned.  The first is for people who live with problem drinkers.  At these seminars we will present the Bottled-up approach and share our own experience.  These will be very interactive sessions and we would anticipate that attendees would be prepared to share and participate in discussions and exercises.

The second type of seminars/workshops that we offer are aimed at therapists and counsellors.  At present all the help that is available is geared towards the problem drinker and very little is provided for the families and partners.  We aim to make our program as wide spread as possible by teaching therapists about the issues and the Bottled-up program.  You can find a press cutting about Bottled-up here.

Lastly, we have been contracted by a major UK publisher (Lion Hudson) to write the Bottled-up book.  This book is scheduled for publication summer of 2010.
 
 
All material copyright Lou Lewis and John McMahon © 2010

All photographs by Cassia Lewis