Changing,
Fear bites. Dee started a great thread on Fear -- you might want to check it out.
The way I looked at it was I as soon as I knew that one drink was the start of a spiral, I knew that I had to quit, and once I quit, I never wanted to have to do that again (still drank a bit trying to prove I could, epic fail).
The fact is that medical community is now pretty much in agreement that alcohol changes your brain receptors and once they are changed that every time you drink anything they say hello my friend, lets party. Simply put, there is no one glass of wine or just on Fridays any more.
I don't know about others but for me at some point it was all just too tiring to be at the behest of the darn receptors. I also found that I was drinking to try and get some control over things that were completely outside my control, and all the more so after I drank.
And once I accepted that I could not control my drinking after I started but could abstain from the first -- with a lot of effort at first -- in a way it got easier, like when I was pregnant. Cant drink, don't drink, move on.
This is not to say that everyone that drinks too much is at that point, just that a lot of us were.
Good luck -- we are here if you need us.