Originally Posted by
Gonnachange 
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to respond and offer your experience. Secondly, to answer your question I have not sought out any of the treatment facilities or AA that you mentioned. What I have done is read up on AVRT and leaned on the SR community. I'm not perfect, as is well documented, but I'm far better than I was. It wasn't too long ago I was a daily drinker. For the first time in about a week I drank last Friday and on Tuesday at an impromptu dinner party I had 1.5 glasses of wine. My intention is not to moderate, but if my screw ups are limited to that then it shouldn't be that hard to become totally compliant with my plan. Lastly, I'm glad that you found what works for you. As with so many things in life there are many ways to achieve and we each have to find the right approach for us. The downside to that is sometimes it takes a while. I wish you well in your continued sobriety.
I should have been clearer in my comments.
I wasn't trying to focus on "what worked for me" in terms of a specific method or program. It was, instead, my willingness to achieve sobriety and to live a better life
by any means necessary that made the difference, regardless of the particular mode of treatment.
I've been referred to as a "Terrier" at different times in my work, but getting sober has demanded of me much more than force of will. I needed to go beyond my comfort zone, to my way of thinking, and to make sustainable actions in changing my life around, changes that I easily adhere to in the present. Sobriety is for me an opportunity to avail myself of all that life has to offer, and not at all a labor in any sense of that word.
I'm not obsessed with my sobriety; neither is any part of my life boring or particularly static. I'm much more interested in bringing something to the people and activities in my life than in getting something good for myself, though the latter has often been an incidental part of approaching my life in this way.
As someone who works out, I imagine that you're familiar with the feeling of pushing yourself beyond your apparent limits. In my first time around in sobriety, I earned a second-degree black belt in a traditional style of martial arts, Shorin Ryu Karate. I resumed my training last spring with another traditional style of martial arts, Shotokan Karate. You can put in the bare minimum required in order to be promoted (and some people do), but only you and your sensei will know whether or not you're pushing yourself beyond your self-imposed limits as a means of adopting karate as a way of life, rather than learning some cool moves for self-defense.
Same with sobriety. Only we know where we are with sobriety, and whether or not we're determined to make it a way of life that, as they say in AA, we should "wear like a loose-fitting garment."
Don't ever underestimate your ability to live a better life by any means necessary.