yeahgr8

There is a great deal of talk about hitting your own personal rock bottom before finally being able to stop drinking, using gambling or any addiction of sorts.

I have been drinking all my adult life, am 37 now and realised a couple of months ago that i could not stop drinking and that i should either accept that this is my lot in life or get help. I had been down to AA, been to counselling, stopped for periods of time, changed drinks, changed jobs, changed friends/partners, even changed countries etc. in an attempt to try and solve the problem that I had with alcohol.

Now being sober for just 2 months I can see how futile all my previous attempts at quitting drinking were along the years and, more than regret drinking itself, regret the time i wasted trying to control my addicition myself and can honestly say i wish i had spent that time drinking, gambling etc not worrying so much about what i was doing. All that time wasted trying to sort myself out, i wonder what advice we would all give to someone who would ask us how to cut down their drinking down and control it?

Is it possible to stop drinking without hitting rock bottom? Why would any of us do that? If there is still one ounce of hope that someday, the next time, we would be able to control our drinking and return to 'normal' then there is a reason to keep drinking. Do we really have to reach that realisation where we accept that we are powerless over our addiction and unable to solve the problem ourselves completely, without any doubt in our mind before we can get help or be helped?

I had a drinking friend who drank themselves to death, found one morning sitting upright on his bed, always talking about AA, about stopping, about depression, would be the first to say he was an alcoholic as he gulped his double vodka...even cancer didnt stop him! He can't have ever hit that rock bottom, can he?

So after all that how on earth would you help what i was 7 years ago when i would drink on saturday and spend the next week recovering up to the point where i was drinking every night trying to figure out the best way to end it all? Is it possible?