Originally Posted by cantstaystopped
Call it a spiritual awakening but the obsession was lifted as they say. It just wasn't hard to stay sober because I knew to my core I couldn't and wouldn't drink. Didn't matter if I made my meetings or worked my program or not. I was at peace with my alcoholism and made the changes in my life I needed to make...
I don't know what happened to that feeling I used to have. It's like it's gone, and I'm afraid of myself on a daily basis... the obsession is there now where before it wasn't. Like a switch flipped.
I see a couple interesting things which might qualify as rationalizations in your post, although I call them loopholes.
Firstly, the 'obsession' was lifted on your first go around because you actually believed that you couldn't drink. As long as you believed that, the option was off the table, and there was no internal debating. Eventually, the desire to drink faded away naturally.
The problem is that you actually can drink alcohol, and at some point your addiction, which never really dies, woke up and convinced you to discard the old lie.
The reality is that you can't drink without the likelihood of losing control of the effects from your drinking, but you certainly can drink. You've done it for the past two years.
I'm going to make this explicit, in case I'm not making much sense.
"I can't drink" = "I would drink if I could"
This left a giant loophole, because all your addiction had to do, was to convince you that you could handle a drink, now that the 'obsession' was gone.
Secondly, you are afraid of yourself because once the desire to drink faded away, you were counting on the absence of desire to keep you abstinent. That is, no meetings, no program, nothing, just no desire.
However, that was simply a plan to drink in the presence of desire.
"I have no desire to drink" = "I would drink if I did"
So, two common illusions that you used to keep yourself sober have been smashed by your addiction, which has returned with a vengeance, and here you are, as you say.
At this point, you have two options, in my mind. The first is to correct those two common illusions, and to make a decision to quit regardless of desire, and regardless of whether or not you can drink.
I know how it goes, because I've done what you've done in the past, and it really does appear to get more difficult, but perhaps that's partly because the addiction lords our "failure" over us to keep us drinking some more, as Dee noted.
I'm assuming, of course, that you do have the power over the desire to drink, even though you may not believe it at the moment.
If you don't have that power, AA will always be there for you.