Originally Posted by
thomas11 
Ya know, let's skip thinking about tomorrow. I could have my wife drive me up to the bar right now, and I know I'd run into a TON of people and have a really good time. Bars are open until 2AM, plenty of time to catch up with people and so forth. Furthermore, I know they are up there, having a good time, they don't have the handcuffs on themselves, they are doing what they want and having fun doing it. I want that. ok? I'm completely contradicting what I told myself many years ago. And that is I would no longer deprive myself of the pleasures in life. So yeah, its bugging me.
Jeff, when you say you are stubborn and you would drink if you wanted to, I call that the red zone. Don't let it go that far in your mind. I got there once and it is almost impossible to turn back at that point.
I wanted to point out that in the post quoted that you are looking at the situation much differently than I did. You are not depriving yourself of anything, you are trying to break a powerful cycle you find yourself in. It is going to come at you with these thoughts and you have to figure out how to defeat them so you can, as Dee says, achieve escape velocity. You said they are up there having fun and doing what they want. You are not being punished by being grounded. You are doing what you need to do to get yourself healthy and happy. It will be worth it.
I never allowed myself to remember what it felt like to drink. Whenever the "hey baby's" would come at me I would remember some of the horrible drinking memories to keep those thoughts away. Sometimes my brain would scream at me
Just do it...just tonight. When that would happen I would pretend that I had given into the urge the night before and today was actually tomorrow. Last night was a big drinking night at the bar. Aren't you glad you didn't go out and get drunk last night?