Originally Posted by
andyh 
I believe that everyone CAN make & keep that choice/promise;
Thanks Andy for kicking off this discussion, and for mentioning and agreeing with the background premise above.
whether they WILL or not is a different matter entirely.
people make promises they believe absolutely that they'll keep all the time, & then break them - look at marriages!
Yes, this relies upon “knowing” that someone else, by stating a promise, has actually MADE that promise; and/or upon the idea that someone can lie to themselves. And these “knowing” assumptions are the hair-pulling, aggravating, frustrating conundrum for those authorities and service providers dealing with alcohol/drug dependent people. Did they really make the promise, or didn’t they? (These conundrums do result in quite a bit of service providing.)
Well, in fact, there is NO way of truly “knowing” if anyone but yourself makes, for all practical purposes, an “unbreakable promise”. Nevertheless, as time passes, lack of future evidence of drinking CAN be good indicator, and trust can be rebuilt over time.
it's great that you've made the promise & can't imagine ever breaking it. however, your seeming inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to understand that others might not feel similarly, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, seems somewhat obtuse.
This last part of the quote, instead of taking a position on whether it is important to emphasize that, for all practical purposes, there’s no such thing as an “unbreakable promise” to problematic drinkers seeking a means of recovery, simply suggests that my initiating this thread “seems somewhat obtuse.” (Obtuse = stupid, slow-witted, slow, dull-witted, unintelligent, ignorant, simpleminded, witless)