DayTrader

Bayliss,

I don't know if you're powerless over alcohol or not. Nobody here does. You can find out easily though: just look back at your experience with alcohol, with limiting it, with controlling the amount you drink once you start, and with your ability to cut it out all together when you've made up your mind to do so. Your truth will become apparent to you. Many people with alcoholic-type drinking problems aren't powerless over alcohol.....many others are. Find what's true for you.

IF you really ARE powerless, understand, it's no longer a "drug of choice." If one's powerless over it, that makes it a drug of no choice. Many folks, even ppl in recovery, often get this twisted.

The end of my compulsion to drink WAS given to me, free and clear and I did nothing to get it. I didn't work hard for it....heck, I didn't even necessarily want it as a gift. I did surrender though.....I surrendered to the idea that, for me, I WAS and AM powerless over alcohol. Hard work, well....the act itself is easy as pie. The crap leading up to it though, it can seem like hard work but that's more dependent upon one's denial, delusion, arrogance, and levels of resistance. Maintaining it....that's another story - lol....but it was a free and undeserved gift. And thank GOD I didn't have to work for it...or work hard for it.....because I wasn't willing to work for it at all. Once I got it though, then I got willing to work for it but it wasn't like "work"....it was more a labor of love.....but it's something I now enjoy doing, for the most part.

Bizarre? No, I get it..... I felt the exact same way. Wanted to give it up on the one hand but desperately wanted to hold onto my drinking on the other. I totally get it.

The real question though, is - "How's that working for you?" How have the results of holding onto that fear and believing that the 2 options you posted are the only options possible on one hand and that you already know, in advance, that the first one is somehow "bad." You seem to already be experiencing the second one and we can agree that it's not working too well for you, yanno?

One...heck, probably THE toughest thing for me to do......and to continue to do, is to set aside my thinking - to be willing to consider that I don't know it all, that I'm often wrong even in my strongest convictions, and that to get something I don't have but want....I'm going to HAVE to do something I haven't been doing (and it's probably going to be something I don't necessarily want to do).