JohnBarleycorn

susanlauren posed this question to me in another thread, which is now closed. I've debated whether or not to answer publicly, since I am not usually one to share, but I've decided to write this down.

The answer to that question is not so much what I did, as it was an internal change in my own perception of my drinking. It was a long time coming, but my awakening to this new mindset was definitive when it did come, and I believe, instrumental.

I had been drinking daily for years, and it began to take a real toll on my mood and my personality. Alcohol began altering my core being, my way of looking at and relating to the world and to people.

I would drink, and bad things would happen. I would drink some more to forget the pain and guilt, and eventually, some more bad things would happen. I would say things to people that I would never, ever say when not under the influence. People that I cared about.

I am a fairly liberal person, not generally one to engage in absolutist moralizing, but I nevertheless had, before I started drinking to excess, a fascination with the philosophy of morality, such as in the writings of Nietzsche.

Somehow, it dawned on me one day, as I was writing down and going over all the "bad" things that I did, that there are certain acts which I will never commit, under any circumstances, because I consider them heinous and absolutely, unequivocally, wrong. Acts such as, for instance, raping a woman, hitting my mother, torturing animals, etc.

People don't usually ponder the morality of drinking these days, but as a result of this insight, I did just that. I pondered the question of whether or not the act itself of drinking alcohol was, for me, right or wrong, in the moral sense. I wondered where, on a scale of immorality, did my drinking rank? Low? High? Somewhere in the middle?

I could not be absolutely certain of what I would do once under the influence, and I had already commited acts under the influence for which I still grieved. I also knew, from countless experiences, that drinking even small amounts of alcohol would inevitably lead to more drinking, and eventually complete drunkenness, often to obscene levels.

I might have a keen sense of morality while sober, but how could I know, for sure, whether I would not commit some highly immoral act once under the influence, after alcohol disabled my moral judgement?

Since I could not predict what I might do once my moral judgement was disabled, I concluded that, for me, the act of drinking, was profoundly immoral conduct. I do not mean the consequences that might come from the drinking, since I could not predict those consequences with certainty, but the drinking, in and of itself.

I realized that to set myself loose upon my fellow human beings, upon society, in such a state, with my moral judgement disabled, would be a crime against humanity, a crime against society, and a crime against my family.

With this new mindset, I stopped worrying about or even caring about all the conventional wisdom, such as hidden causes of addiction, triggers, warning signs of relapse, meeting attendance, coping strategies, one day at a time, nobody can do it alone, most people won't make it, relapse is a part of recovery, post acute withdrawal, stages of recovery, pink clouds, etc.

ALL OF IT WENT RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW.

With this inner change in my thinking, I came to know the difference between right and wrong, as it pertained to my drinking, and I knew that I would never drink again.

For a while after quitting, I had cravings every so often, but I was able to instantly recognize them as completely foreign to me, as utterly repugnant, much as I would recognize the idea of microwaving a cat as foreign to me, and the cravings would quickly fade.

In a short time, I stopped obsessing over how awful it would be to never drink again, or over when the next time I might get to explode into drunkenness would be. Not drinking alcohol just became part of who I am as a person.

FrothyJay posted this once in the 12-Step forum. He may have had something else in mind when he wrote this, but the end result that he describes nevertheless sounds very similar to what I experienced.