Originally Posted by DriGuy

First, I have accepted that one drink leads to the next and that ultimately I will end up right where I started. How do I know? The fact is that I don't. I haven't tried it since I got sober, so how could I possibly know for sure? Maybe I'm the exception to this rule of "common knowledge."

But my personal plan to stay sober contained an important commitment that I would never drink again. Maybe I could drink without consequence, although I do believe that's a fluff dream. Regardless of what I believe or know, one of the foundations of my own plan was that I would never take another drink. My plan works for me.

Now this thing you have about living in fear that you will drink again is not an unusual fear. It's totally understandable, because you know what your life was like when you drank. And that fear resonates and mirrors what I went through in early sobriety. At first I treated that fear as an asset; That fear was the motivator keeping me sober.

Eventually, that fear subsides with continued success. Is this good or bad? We don't want to live in fear, so it's good. But if losing that fear causes us to drink, it's bad. Wow, talk about a two edged sword! As I felt that fear diminish, I found myself fearing losing my fear, and therefore my sobriety.

But here's the thing. My plan is founded on never taking another drink, and I was committed to sticking with the plan. So how do you let the fear go if not drinking is driven by an emotion of fear? I switched tactics. I decided to actively let the fear go, even pushed it away. Instead of not drinking out of fear, I decided I would not drink out of intellectual choice. That's a way more rock solid strategy, because emotions like fear are fickle and a poor way of running your life. Now with sobriety, you have choice to process decisions using logic, and it's gift that lasts forever as long as you don't drink. OK, it requires some work. You have to make thinking (God forbid) a habit, at least until it becomes your default and it becomes automatic.

Second, AA is not for everyone. It's not even designed for everyone. It's one strategy out of many and it's a spiritual program designed for spiritual people who are drawn to solutions of a supernatural nature. Not everyone is built that way.

But there are other things about AA that are useful. As you have already found, there are nice people in AA who do understand you, and they have knowledge and advice that you can sort through and experiment with. This type of help is more heart to heart and based on practical experience, rather than the formalized parts of the AA program. There are useful tidbits scattered through these personal exchanges that can help you.

It's also a group of new friends, the kind of friends you need when you are are trying to break bad habits that your other friends make a normal part of their lives.

I went to meetings daily for a couple years, and then started going less and less as I milked AA for the last of the most helpful parts. I went to my last meeting 10 years ago. I could have left years before that, but I still liked being around that environment. Like letting go of my fears, I let go of AA. I'm on my own path now, and it sounds like you are finding your own path too. There is nothing wrong with that. We should not sell ourselves short. We need plans. The psychologists say that goals are important. We can make good plans and decisions on our own. Sometimes we need help. That's OK too.