Originally Posted by littlefish

How about using some new vocabulary? I don't really equate my sobriety to perfection. Perfection implies, to me at least, reaching a perfect state, that it's done, a static, unchanging thing. I have found that sobriety is far from perfect, is a changing, growing and definitely not a static thing.

I keep growing in sobriety. Like an explorer discovering a new land, I keep wandering into new, amazing environments I couldn't have dreamed of. I trip and stumble, too, though.

I also understand relapsing. It took me about 2.5 years to get sober. Lots of relapsing. I don't look back on my relapsing as failing. Even though I defined it that way at the time. Looking back, I define it as "not getting it" yet.

Ultimately it didn't boil down to a battle between self-control, giving up or being disciplined. It was more about having a profound mental change, a psychic change when I truly equated alcohol with poison, on a deeply personal and emotional level. Not just on the intellectual level.

Sure, I repeated to myself hundreds of times on the intellectual level that I couldn't drink because I cannot process alcohol like normal people, but I didn't truly believe it. The thinking remained on the logical level, open to tweaking and tinkering and discussion. I had to reach the state of belief: having a profound change of my basic values and my perception of myself as someone who is not quite normal, and then embraced that.

I guess the vocabulary word I might suggest instead of perfection is "growth".