GerandTwine

First, you must replace the “not” with “never”. “I will never drink again”.

This is the timeless pledge of unconditional permanent abstinence that is as historically prominent as the Ten Commandments and other moralisms that help people enjoy and trust the society in which they live.

It is also the Big Plan of Rational Recovery’s Addictive Voice Recognition Technique which is modeled after how people have been recovering from addiction on their own for centuries.

When an addicted person makes the Big Plan, they often have a flood of thoughts and feelings which are easily sorted out. All thoughts and feelings doubting that plan are from IT - your Addictive Voice - the old appetite that has no control of YOUR voluntary muscles. On the other hand, all thoughts and feelings that relate to your having made a huge positive change for your future by simply deciding to never again do a very particular voluntary activity - putting alcohol in your blood - are the authentic YOU. Thus, AVRT.

“One day at a time” is a much more recent development born out of two parents: its father being the excuses for not taking the pledge that drunkards invent who don’t want to quit once and for all; its mother being the gigantic service industry invented to help those drunkards legitimize their excuses and help them work on those excuses instead of recognizing them as red herrings and bluffing. The discovery of excuses by unrepentant drunkards began in earnest almost two hundred years ago when the Washingtonians made it common knowledge that any drunkard could take the pledge and make it stick. Before that time, it was generally thought that drunkards were hopeless cases, and would die that way.