Starting day 4 with a meeting under my belt and I'm having some insights this morning. I have been resistant to the AA model but two things pop out to me already. I am only resistant to saying I'm an alcoholic because on some level I've always wanted to figure out how to be a normal drinker. I'm not a normal drinker. I'm an alcoholic. I dread events where I know there will be drinking because I'm so afraid of what I'm going to do/how I'm going to embarrass myself and my family. Because once I get to drinking there is no telling what will happen but I can never just not start no matter how many times I rehearse just saying no thank you and not drinking thus? I really am powerless over alcohol. I hate everything about the sound of that but I get why it's valuable. This is a serious life threatening thing for me and is going to take some big guns to stay sober. That's just a fact that I've proven to myself many a time. I need support, a plan, tools and a zero tolerance policy for ever taking another drink again and it's still going to be hard. Recovery is what I do now. And from what I've been reading (I've been reading a ton of recovery literature) I'm going to be doing it for the rest of my life. This isn't something I fix and move on. That's a little disheartening but It's more hopeful and comforting than the alternative--being out of control, scared, depressed, regretful, embarrassed and physical sick all the time.