SteppingItUp,
I have to say, you are unusually polite and tempered in your response - not the usual "you are killing alcoholics and I hope you get cancer" I might normally get.
Originally Posted by
SteppingItUp 
I am not a hard drinker -- I am something else, which is a real alcoholic. If you are a hard drinker and you have found an approach that works for you, I am happy to hear it, and I wish you well.
I don't know, I might have been a hard drinker for a few years in the beginning, when I just drank every day, but not all day. I just can't fathom a hard drinker doing what I did for almost two years by the end. Drink whiskey all day every day, often without food, until passing out, wake up, throw up from the drinking, then drink again anyway right after, straining to keep it down, because the misery was too much. Repeat ad nauseum, or until the booze runs out.
Originally Posted by
SteppingItUp However, if you are a hard drinker rather than a real alcoholic, I might ask you to consider that it could be harmful to tell real alcoholics, many of whom are just beginning to seek help, that they are just like you, that they will be fine if they just do what a hard drinker does to stop, and that alcoholism, as I know alcoholism to be, can be overcome by "thinking my way out of it according to my own will power," or other suggestions similar to those found in your signature.
If I had listened to that kind of information, through my own wishful thinking or the ongoing alcoholic delusion with which I came into recovery, I believe it could have helped to keep me very sick.
I am mindful that the suggestion in my signature is in contradiction to the usual, but that is intentional. Listening to information about how I was diseased, powerless, and could have no effective mental defense helped keep me very sick indeed. It was only when I finally stopped listening that I got better.
Originally Posted by
SteppingItUp Alcoholism is a frequently fatal illness; I pray that you take this into consideration in the new line of morality that you suggest is managing to keep you sober. Just as I won't tell a stomach cancer patient that he doesn't need treatment because my own stomach problems cleared up the good old fashioned way at home, I propose that the fact that you may be a hard drinker does not mean that alcoholism doesn't exist, or that treatment for non-alcoholics will ever be sufficient for real alcoholics when the graveyards are full of people who prove that theory to be tragically flawed.
I won't say that I haven't seen alcoholics die, because I have, and more so once I started attending AA.
Originally Posted by
SteppingItUp If you are a hard drinker, I'm sure your experience can be very helpful to other hard drinkers -- I would support you in that all the way. On a similar note, if you are so sure you are not a real alcoholic, perhaps it would be best to allow real alcoholics in recovery to show real alcoholics what has worked, and continues to work, for them. There is a solution, it works, and it's a life saver for others as sick as I have been.
Best wishes to you in all ways.
I have seen people get better in AA, just as I have seen people get worse while in AA. If AA can keep you sober, I don't begrudge your solution, nor would I tell you to stop using it. My interest is in those people who cannot be helped by AA, particularly the ones who have already tried its solution and were unsuccessful.