Originally Posted by DriGuy

I sometimes ask myself why I didn't do it sooner, but that's the way alcoholism is. You can't understand how living with out alcohol could be satisfying. You don't have any point of comparison. Worse yet, what is ahead is an unknown. And the unknown is scarier than what you know, even if what you know sucks.

You can't just put the bottle down and see what happens, because you are immediately inundated with cravings. You sobriety experiment yields unpleasant effects. The cravings don't last forever, but you have no way of knowing they don't last forever. So you go back to the bottle thinking you can try again later after the craving is satisfied. It's a conundrum. You have to drink to find the strength to try again, but the results are always the same until you break the cycle, and then the light appears.