My only plan when I quit was to plan to not drink. I read about AVRT and the things I picked up from it resonated with me . I was in a place where I felt I was serious , this time(meaning then) , to make a real run at quitting. To be honest I had felt the same way in the past and went back to drinking , so my confidence wasn't initailly 'ironclad', but I decided I'd give it(quitting) a go and at least try and not half- ass it and let the chips fall where they may. So I took on the motto "I will never drink again , and I will not change my mind" and went from there, and then started learning through the experience of ending the addiction.
In the first two weeks of quitting I went on a vacation, the same very adult vacation I had been on before. The kind that pretty much revolve around cocktails in the afternoon through late night drinking, spinkled in with the morning beach beers and bloody maries. I always loved and looked forward those trips ,obviously, because drinking is not just expected but almost required.
I mostly drank alone ,at home, and late into the night when the family was in bed .But trips like these were 'fun' because I could drink all day and everyone else did too , the comraderie was a bonus.
I think planning on going was partly playing into the idea of setting up a failure of 'quit', who would blame me ? It was too early , too tempting and I (and my AV) knew I could manipulate my wife into accepting the idea that I could just decide again to 'quit for good' when we got back.
Somehow I stayed resolved from one day to the next , it was torture sometimes minute by minute because I knew I could fail and 'get away with it', so why not?! I remember one meal barely being able to focus on eating because I was having raging debates in my head , about three every nanosecond, as to whether or not call the waitress over and just order a damn bourbon already. But I didn't ,and other than my AV no one could be more surprised, every time in the past I was in that situation I just called the waitress over and let the chips fall where they may, countless times.
The line in post that made me think of all this was.".I saw everyone else drinking, so I did too". I know that line of reasoning and used it all the time to justify the choice to drink , tempering the idea in my head with some "just tonight" "not gonna go crazy" ect ect. At the moment of making those choices it felt like the drinking was so important , that not drinking at that moment would mean giving up so much, what that ' so much' was is hard to articulate but it feels like giving up a lot , as if the next few hours with alcohol would be worth any price and all rational calculations of the real damage are too quickly and easily brushed aside.
That was the learning part for me , that feeling of loss, what felt like such a tremendous loss, if I chose not to drink. It made me look at that perceived loss , really look at it and examine it from all angles and try and see if I could pin point where it was coming from. Intellectually I could understand that not drinking would only 'rob' me of a few hours of drunkeness and all the associated negative consequences going forward. But that feeling, that intense desire, the wanting to throw away the rational undertanding and go for the few hours of indulging proved to be almost inescapable in the past, I still remember that feeling. That was the raw AV, the addiction itself, the blinding desire, the spark that pushes toward the choice to drink and open the floodgates to all the rest.
That is the spark that needs to be dismissed, choked out , it's not the fire. I build the fire by adding fuel to spark. When I do nothing more than notice or contemplate the spark it fizzles and spurters a little ,maybe even brightly, but it will die out without being fed the fuel.
My AV has significantly died down, the sparks are less frequent and have , thankfully, a more lackluster appeal because every time (every) since deciding to quit and not change my mind , I have resolved to no longer throw out the rational evaluation of what giving into the temptation would mean. The choice to drink , even for 'just that night' are simply not worth that look in wife's eye even just one more time, ever.
You messed up, but you are not stupid, you just need to choke the addiction out completely, rootin for ya, put your AV on notice, the sparks may pop up but they will not burn as bright. After time I am able and comfortable with seeing 'everyone ' drink , doesn't start the sparkler , I rarely notice and it's almost odd to say that now, because 'then' I would not have believed it
