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Old 01-08-2016, 03:17 AM
  # 12 (permalink)  
OpenTuning
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Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 507
I do completely understand why you're struggling with being told how what you're doing "isn't good enough". It's like the kid at football training who's just run three times round the track, further than he's ever gone, is amazed at what he's done, looks up at his coach for praise, and gets "why have you stopped? Go again you lazy so and so". I know it doesn't seem fair. You'll describe a situation where in the past you'd have drunk huge amounts, only had 2 drinks, and everyone tells you off for that instead of praising you.

But a bit like that football coach, the reason we're doing this is because we want you to be a winner. A better analogy might be like those drill sergeants in army basic training. They're unfeeling, harsh, brutal, insulting, constantly pushing, never satisfied, never dish out praise, but what they teach their recruits could save their lives. It's genuinely life or death.

The reason we all react the same way to your experiments with moderation, is purely from all the earlier posts you've made describing what alcohol has done to you in the past. It's almost literally beaten you up and put you in hospital, with a broken body. You've given us no reason to believe you can moderate, and every reason to believe that drinking could kill you if you don't cut it out of your life. That's where this is coming from.

What you have done now is answer the question I've had for a long time now. You have described "slips", but they didn't feel like that to me. They always seemed carefully planned and deliberate. And as you just wrote, you're "currently not drinking" as opposed to having quit. And as long as you maintain that mind set, you will continue to post about your "slips", people here will react the way we always do, and in my view it will just be a waiting game until your drinking explodes again.

So I guess the question I have now is this. Do you, in your heart of hearts, really, truly believe that you are someone who can moderate their drinking? If so, is it based on any evidence, or is it just your pride? The fact that as someone who has had so much success in life, who is used to being looked up to for all the things you've achieved, can't accept the fact that what you most want, to be a normal moderate drinker, is something you are simply incapable of doing. That perhaps you feel accepting that would be admitting that you've "failed" and that isn't something you're prepared to do? And if that's a possibility, the next question is, is protecting your pride something you are prepared to die for? Because that's what we're all worried about if you end up back drinking like you were.
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