So when you say you've "only" been drinking for those two years time is no longer relative. It's some pretty devastating stuff. We use words like "only" to minimalize the seriousness of the situation.
In this case, the duration of time is definitely a relevant factor. All other things being equal, drinking for five years is worse for you than drinking for two years. So when I say I've been drinking for "only" two years, it does make a difference. Virtually any study or article you read states explicitly that duration of drinking is one of the most significant factors in predicting relapse.
We use words like "only" to minimalize the seriousness of the situation.
Not exclusively. We use words like "only" also when they're accurate. I only have one tumor in my brain. Sure it might kill me, but at least it's one!
How can you go from saying that you had been through withdrawal that was arguably the most scariest experience in your life, and then ask if it makes sense that if you don't give it another shot then you'll never know if the last three months have been for naught? If you think that withdrawal was scary the last time through, each time, it's worse. You're willing to risk that yet you think you still need to test the waters. So to me, that makes no sense. You don't see that there's already a problem that's beyond drinking due to boredom.
You've brought my withdrawals up before, so let me address them directly this time. First, your insight into my experience(s) with withdrawal comes solely from my posts. You don't really know how bad they were, because they were, by definition, subjective. Obviously, since I had never gone through withdrawal before the first time, I had no benchmark against which to compare it. So my calling it a "mild" withdrawal does not necessarily make it so. It could've been more or less mild in an objective sense, just unknown to me, or by extension to you or anyone else on this forum, at the time.
In other words, our self-evaluations are not always accurate. This is the problem inherent with surveys and questionnaires. People are notoriously bad at diagnosing their own internal mental states. As humans, we're all vulnerable to innate cognitive biases. So when I say I may have had a mild experience with withdrawal, I could be downplaying it because I don't want to accept the reality that my problem is as severe as it really is, or I could be overplaying it because the fear/novelty of the withdrawal clouded my objectivity, thus making me believe the situation to be worse than actuality. Either is possible. But again my point is that humans make these mistakes all the time, and often not deliberately.
Don't get me wrong though. I know that withdrawal, in general, is a very serious thing, and that going through one, no matter how "mild," is prima facie evidence that alcohol consumption has caused one's body to react/overreact in an abnormal way. So yes, withdrawal is serious.
If you think that withdrawal was scary the last time through, each time, it's worse.
My first experience was 10x worse than the second. This is why I say it's highly subjective; it depends to a large extent on the threshold for what one considers proper withdrawal. Hand tremors? Anxiety? DTs? Which of those are necessary/sufficient? My second experience with "withdrawal" was simply not being able to sleep as well while sobering up, which is why I say the first experience was 10x worse because I was experiencing not only a larger quantity of symptoms, but their intensity and duration were also higher.
You're willing to risk that yet you think you still need to test the waters. So to me, that makes no sense. You don't see that there's already a problem that's beyond drinking due to boredom.
Alcoholic logic, what can I say?
I just know that as long as I am on this board I'm going to do everything I can to send the message that this will never get better. Ever. It only gets worse and if you think you have any idea of how bad it can get, think again.
I don't really see things as necessarily black/white. Research into addiction science is growing every day. There are things that we know now that we never would've imagined were true, say, fifty years ago. Who would've thought that there do in fact exist genes that make certain individuals, given the right environmental triggers, more prone to addiction? These are facts. And they're growing in number everyday. Maybe in another fifty years we'll have a more accurate picture of alcoholism, and maybe then we'll able to look back and say, well, some of these theories were correct; these others weren't. I just think it's too premature to say that we know everything with respect to alcohol and how different individuals become addicted differently. All of this is to say that, there are definitely counterexamples to your claim that it only gets worse. At the moment there simply isn't conclusive evidence to show unequivocally that alcohol is as progressive of a disease as people initially thought. It can be, but not universally so. The mechanisms behind addiction are quite complex, but also very interesting. That was my longwinded way of saying that our knowledge grows everyday, and there are some things that we accept as fact today that at some later date can be rendered false due to new information.
I care and that's why I posted what I did. Pretty much all I have to say on the subject.
That's cool, because a lot of people
don't care. (I don't mean on this forum; I mean people in general.) So thanks for the insight. It's always welcomed!