I tried and failed for years. I tried AA, SMART, Lifering, F2F meetings, online meetings, reading Alan Carr's book, Jason Vale's book, Mark Tuschel's book, Moderation Management, I read Sober for Good, Under the Influence, Beyond the Influence, I labeled myself alcoholic, problem drinker, alcohol addict, just general **** up, I read scads of recovery memoirs, Buddhist 12 Step books, regular books on Buddhism, I read books on self-defeating behaviors, Assertiveness skills, and books on learning to say no, I took the online AVRT course, I watched 28 Days, Flight, Days of Wine and Roses, Smashed, When a Man Loves a Woman, Down to the Bone, The Story of Bill W...I tried it all and I was still drinking!
My head was so filled with **** that I had no idea which way to turn. I thought that maybe my lot in life was to be a hopeless alcoholic. I thought maybe I was just addicted to trying to get sober, to living in the problem and the effort. I thought maybe I will never get it. I was miserable, hopeless, sitting with a head full of recovery knowledge, and still drinking. In fact, I think my search for recovery was making me more miserable than my drinking was.
I contemplated just giving up on trying to get sober and just going back to drinking and getting on with my life. Unfortunately, in 35 years of drinking, I had never been able to separate my drinking from how it made me feel - that misery that made me realize drinking wasn't for me.
Then a curious thing happened. I decided to declutter my mind of "recovery" knowledge. I recognized that the common thread through everything I had read and learned was that if I don't drink, then I won't get drunk. Not drinking to achieve sobriety: it was the most fundamental, critical, obvious, and really only element for getting and staying sober. I rejected the idea that anything outside of myself would get me sober. The was no trick or magic method. It was going to rely entirely on me, my motivation and commitment. I also embraced the knowledge that it was entirely within my power to not drink. Finally, I recognized that because of damage my drinking had done to my brain, my reward system and my cognitive functioning would be off for a while. My own brain would be working against me for the first few weeks and months. I was simply going to have to have faith that not drinking was the right decision and it would get better and easier.
I don't know if any of that helps, but I hope so. It's what helped me.