Day 116
So I've been thinking a lot about what Dee had said previously, which was
Originally Posted by
Dee74 
It's anything but safe.
You're totally confusing abstinence with control.
If you're an alcoholic like me, no amount of time will reset you, or give you that control others have and apparently you desperately want..
Sooner or later you're going to lose control again.
D
And as I've also made clear, I fully agree that abstinence is not synonymous with control. The question, though, is how can I know the difference? It's kind of like that joke about going to the doctor and telling him, "My arm hurts when I do this," and he says, "Well stop doing that!" It's not really a fix. I see abstinence the same way. It's not really a "cure," and, as Dee said, it's not the same as control.
So back to the question -- how can I know whether I am truly in control? This is a serious question. You know it's like, if you break your arm, then you go do physical therapy, but the only way to know whether you've regained your strength is to actually experiment, right?
All of this is to say that, how can I know whether these three months have been all for naught unless I can reexamine my relationship with alcohol? Does that make sense?
I'm not trying to rationalize my thinking in order to justify drinking again. I'm just genuinely wondering how exactly I can delineate the distinction between abstinence and control. Do I deliberately put myself into situations in which alcohol is available, and see how I react? Do I go sniff rubbing alcohol and see if that triggers a craving? I really don't know.