Originally Posted by
NeverHadALegal 
Is it possible that our relapses are much much worse than they actually would be based on power of suggestion. For years or how ever long you have been in the program it has been pounded in to our heads that 1 drink will lead us to doom. Is it possible that if we un-wash these "facts" from our brain, we could go on living happy life's enjoying a drink or two after a few years of sob riety?
~Doubts
Its not the power of suggestion which defines what is or isn't a relapse in anybody's experience - its their own journey which brings them to their own understanding of what it means to have sobriety or to have moderated drinking or to define what is a relapse in either case.
The moment a person decides a drink can be moderated they no longer define such drinks as relapses - until things become all crazy again they would consider their drinking as just being under their control. When things finally go off the rails again then they would consider their drinking is again now uncontrollable - and they would quit or try to quit. And so we've come full circle.
Sobriety and drinking don't go together for those who have crossed the line into problem drinking/alcoholism - for those who haven't crossed over they don't think about "sobriety" they just enjoy their drinks and get on with living of course.
The question as stated simply looks to me anyways as alcoholic-minded thinking to justify having a few drinks with the idea that if we really believe we have been brain-washed our beliefs can make it so, lol.
Not.
You know, its not really the one drink that would lead me (us) to doom - its all the crap I would more and more justify to get that second, third, fourth, fifth...well, you get my drift I'm thinking. And all that crap would be the destruction of my life being turned from sobriety back into drinking - I'm thinking that would really %#$ me up, hahaha. I'm laughing because a return to drinking for any justification really would be/is such a huge joke.
Yeah, so its not really that one drink - its all the drinks that would follow - and for those who then say - "Yeah, but I could control it after all that sobriety" - I say, "Yeah, and all that sobriety is now History. Past. Done. Bye-bye. Drinking again becomes the new deal going forward because all we can do is live and die in our "NOW" and of course then our past is our experience and our future is yet untold...
A sober mind is a terrible thing to waste.