Originally Posted by
LBrain 
Good job on not drinking. As I read the OP I was thinking, NON-alcoholics think like this too.
True dat.
Humans are predisposed to optimism because memories of positive experiences tend to figure more heavily in our emotional thinking than memories of the negatives. Our ancient ancestors who remembered the joy of finding fresh water kept putting one foot in front of the other during the drought. The ones who could only recall the pain of finding a dried up water hole sat down and died. We descended from optimists.
It doesn't serve us well in addiciton, though. That's why DoubleDragon's exercise of writing down a list of the negatives is such a powerful tool. It forces an elevation of memory in the thought process from emotional to deliberative, and enables more rational choices.
