Originally Posted by
ontherightpath 
I love the saying if you don't drink between meetings you can't get drunk. I need to abide by that.
So, if you're powerless over alcohol, how are you going to not drink between meetings?
I don't want to sound like I'm judging, ontherightpath. When I saw your last set of posts, about being tempted and 'overcoming' it, I thought to myself, "There's a lady that's in trouble." Why would I think that when it sounded like you were doing well? It's because I've seen thousands of alcoholics do the same exact thing. A little confidence, a few successes with not drinking, and then BAM, off the deep end.
When the AA Big Book was being written, they asked a doctor who ran a detox/treatment center to offer his observations of the alcoholics he saw.
Originally Posted by AA BB 1st
They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks-drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
Does that sound like you, ontherightpath? Quitting, staying dry for a time, getting drunk, emerging remorseful and swearing off again?
The doctor's observation was that these people, people like you and me, just simply didn't get better. They didn't recover unless the could undergo some kind of psychic change that shifted the whole foundation of their thinking. It was similar to the observation that Carl Jung made of alcoholics at that time.
The 12 Steps are the actions that many, many of us have taken to produce that psychic change.