my experience was that i promised i would never drink again 100s of times in my drinking days. I did the same with smoking too. The key to my recovery is that I'm not going to have a drink today, not forever as that is nuts because i don't know what the future holds. I'm not talking about the one day at a time thing which helps in early recovery by only having to white knuckle through 24 hours, i mean an acceptance that you only have today to worry about as you don't know what will happen tomorrow. If you can go further than that and practice living in the minute through mindfulness or the like then you even stand a chance of being happy and sober
