Okay, I'm successfully three days not-drinking, which is a good start. I've reread the RR book, taken again the crash course, and read through all the threads and many debates on various posts. I've made a Big Plan.
This needs to work. There is no reason it can't. I quit smoking years and years ago, which was hell, and I don't consider myself a smoke-aholic, or whatever the term would be. I'm just a non-smoker now. Why can't it be the same for drinking?? What is the difference? A drug is a drug is a drug. The only difference between nicotine and alcohol, it would appear to me, is that one is now widely accepted in society and the other has become less so. But why should my thoughts about quitting one or the other be different? They shouldn't. I just want to be alcohol free, not chained by it and a label for life.
The only difference between nicotine and alcohol I can see is that I despised everything about cigarettes at the end: the cost, the way it affected my breathing, the smell, the judgements from people, the feigning, etc. With alcohol, I despised countless moments and many repercussions, but I did enjoy zoning out in a drunken fog. But, having read The Naked Mind multiple times and studied the RR book, I understand that I had basically trained my mind to supposedly enjoy the results of drinking alcohol. So, I just need to re-train it not to. In the meantime, I have to flat-out ignore the beast which is trying is trying to stop that retraining.
Just needed to write this out to clarify it in my brain. Thanks for reading. I'm trying.