Old 06-21-2017, 09:49 AM
  # 41 (permalink)  
zerothehero
waking down
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 4,641
I have and I will continue not to drink. My point in this thread has not been to question RR, but to say that it's more complex than that.

Let's look at it this way. Imagine a person who has never picked up alcohol or another drug, but suffers from a certain sense that things could be better - that they could improve their overall well-being. That person, just like a person (like myself) who has committed to permanent sobriety after years of substance abuse, might benefit from a variety of approaches (exercise, self-help, mindfulness, social clubs, even therapy) to "recover" from whatever it is that has been dogging them. Maybe it's trauma, grief, disappointments, malaise due to poor nutrition, an abusive boss...you name it.

Certainly, my confidence in continued and permanent sobriety has lifted a great weight off my shoulders, but I have found that it has opened up so much more to explore, and yes, heal. I don't tell people I'm in recovery; I just say I don't drink or get high. Sometimes I joke that I drank my lifetime's ration years ago and stopped for health reasons. True enough.

I also don't tell myself or anyone else that I'm an alcoholic. Having studied the DSM V, I sometimes remind myself that I had met criteria for substance use disorder, and by their definition I am beyond the time limit to be considered in remittance.

It is good to question the permanent recovery mentality that pervades the dominant approach. Community support can certainly help, but at some point people need to move on, and working on myself is very much about moving on.

I've mentioned mindfulness (and that listening to the AV or inner voice or voices is a form of mindfulness) which for me was at first about relapse prevention, then about anxiety and stress reduction, and now simply a practice related to my commitment to Buddhism. Early on, saying I will never drink again and I will never change my mind made me feel a little like Stuart Smiley ("because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me"). That voice would reply, "Yeah, right." I simply wasn't confident even though I could say it, but I kept saying it, and it stuck.

To me the most powerful practice in RR is that commitment. Engaging with the AV is a close second. But even then, I think we eventually need to move beyond a reliance on RR (or SMART or AA or...) and, like GerandTwine said, become a "common teetotaller."

Trimpey likes to diss on the helping professions, and I'm not the only one who bristles at those ads on TV that say, "You can't do it alone." It's predatory advertising. At the same time, I know people who work in those professions, many who have suffered either from their own addictions and/or from that of loved ones, and blanket statements about "the system" are just that, blanket statements; over-generalizations. Many people in that "system" are loving people who just want to help, and the front line workers aren't getting rich off it. So, Trimpey is right on some points, but he's a little over the top in making such sweeping generalizations about everything other than his own approach, and those generalizations have clearly been parroted by some here.

That's all I'm saying. I'm a skeptic. RR is good stuff, but I take everything with a grain of salt, and my critical voice tells me there's quite a bit of hyperbole on his website.

Now, back to the initial question of this thread. I think, regardless of the social or cultural context, if pushed I would simply say, "Please respect the fact that I do not drink - ever." If they can't respect that, well, they can bite my hairy, pimply dumper.
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