doggonecarl

Your statement here pretty much says it all. You’re not here for sobriety. There’s no dissuading you, so I wasn’t even going to reply. But then I remembered that a lot of newcomers are reading this thread. Newcomers and lurkers who are on the fence about quitting drinking. So while there is no discouraging you from drinking, I may encourage someone else to accept sobriety as the solution.

It’s not drinking you want to stop, it’s the hiding and the drinking alone and the binges that lead to terrible hangovers and withdrawals. You want to drink, you just don’t want the consequences of drinking. I get it. That pretty much summarizes most of my drinking years.

I didn’t want to quit drinking. Oh sure, something terrible would happen as a result of my drinking and I’d vow to quit. “That is never going to happen again,” whatever that was. But the solution I sought was never quitting drinking. It was addressing the “That” whatever that was. When the “that” was crippling hangovers, I worked on avoiding hangovers; antics like not mixing liquors, not doing shots, minimizing mid-week drinking. If the “That” was an episode of uncontrolled drinking, I rationed what I bought, or limited the money I carried going out. Stopped mixing beer with opiates, wine with sedatives.

If it was drunk driving that was prompting my vow, I was hyper vigilant about keeping the amount of alcohol consumed to manageable levels…until I got home. Then I could drink all I wanted. In the last years of my drinking, almost all of it was at home. Cured my drunk driving, didn’t cure my alcoholism.

Every attempt to control my drinking worked. Until it didn’t. And then I was right back to square one. Holding my head in my hands and vowing never to let that happen again.

I’m not even talking about the other ways that alcohol ravaged my life. I was only concerned with the things that took away the enjoyment of drinking. I wanted to drink; I just didn’t want to suffer from it.

I found the solution to my suffering, much of which I wasn’t aware of until I actually applied the solution. That solution was quitting drinking. Getting sober, staying sober, and learning how to live and love a sober life. My first break through was realizing I wasn’t a normal drinker. Never was, and never would be. The only answer was accepting never drinking again.

The second breakthrough was coming to the understanding about the futility of my drinking. That can only be done after not drinking for a while and engaging in recovery work. Only then could I embrace sobriety.

BD, if you can drink and it not make you miserable, more power to you. You’ll be the exception, but you never know until you try. You say that if you slip up, you’ll be back and you’ll accept abstinence. And if that’s the case, I hope it does prove the last straw. I hope your failure gives you the proof you need that you can’t drink. Sadly though, and this can be backed up by others who have been here as long or longer than I, not everyone who returns to drinking comes back from it.