SD I think you are right about attempting to get sober via the cerebral approach. I tried it for years with varying degrees of success. It’s that approach characterized by the belief that staying sober is a matter of “will”, “mental attitude” and self-direction. I’m a reasonably smart guy and this basic method worked in every other area, so why not with alcohol? The weeks and occasional months I sometimes spend sober were just more evidence (to me) that I would eventually “get it” right. The only problem was I never did.
Finally some really nasty stuff started happening. It was like reality poked me in the eye and said “wake the f*ck up”! It got my attention. But I still didn’t “get it’.
Not right away at least. I needed more persuasion. It came in the form of still more failure. Binges happened in response to both good times and the occasional case of the “f*ck it’s”.
What I came to understand later was that there were times that a part of me that wanted to drink more than the part that did'nt . Ya, I could say I didn’t want to drink a thousand times a day, but there were times that that just was not true. And that was the truth of it. I finally needed to do what others had done and had success with. I had to do something that I really did not want to do. I was going to change ME via a method not of my own invention! And I hated to admit that!
If you need to come to these same conclusions, I hope you don’t spend as long as I did in reaching them.