I've never gone to one of those meetings before. About 2 years before I quit, I called the hotline just to inquire about it, but I didn't end up following through with it.
For me, I just decided to quit one day, and I didn't look back. I never experienced any of the withdrawals that I read about, and I found that once I made up my mind, stopping wasn't that hard, as ridiculous as that sounds, because I struggled with quitting for about 3 years before I finally quit.
I just replied to another thread where a poster was saying that just being at an AA meeting made her want to drink even more when she got home. And I have to admit, since I've read this forum over the last 2 days since I made this thread, it's had an odd effect on me.
For whatever reason, I've been thinking about it much more over the last 2 days, and it's left a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, for lack of a better explanation. So I was wondering if AA meeting are for everyone? Because so far it seems like the more I read about drinking and think about it, the harder it is to just put it out of my mind.
My initial question about whether an alcoholic can ever return to 'regular' drinking was a question that I had been pondering for around a year, but it was just something I was curious about, but I have never been even close to going to the liquor store though.
Perhaps part of me is still in denial about whether I was a "real" alcoholic or not. But, of course I was, because I was a heavy drinker for about 5 years, and before that I would be described as a weekend binge drinker.
Once I started to drink alone, I didn't drink every day, but on average, if you looked at the year as a whole, it was probably around 4-5 days a week. I know it was a serious problem, because for 3 of those years I wanted to quit, but I just never did. I had 2 or 3 periods where I quit for around a month, but I ended up going back to it.
But like I said, once I finally decided to quit, it was sort of strange how 'easy' it seemed to me. I do admit that I was in sort of 'shock', because I just sat there in front of my computer with my music on each night doing exactly the same thing as I always did, just without the alcohol.