autumn4

I have a question to ask and would really appreciate some clarity on my situation so thankyou in advance.
I have finally managed to get to 10months sobriety from being an intermittent blackout drinker taking a relative small amount of vino such as 1 to 1 1/2 bottles , I was deeply ashamed of this as I suffered from growing up in an alc home and did not want to perpetuate the cycle with my own kids so I would hide it or buy a bottle and tip half out in an effort to control. I have done things out of character when drinking and my rock bottom was driving across town in a blackout. My question is, after doing some inner work on my deeper issues just before I quit I did manage to control to just one drink on the last five or so occasions at xmas 2014. I go to aa but cant really identify with their stories and feel like I just dont fit in.. as I am not 'out there', quiet & reserved ..continuing to go as hoping that I will eventually just 'get it'! I think that I am allergic to alcohol and I feel depressed and anxious after drinking... but obsessed with the thought that I might have just grown out of it!
Is this the cunning,baffling & powerful disease working itself in me as I keep thinking when I make a year I am going to do another trial of taking that first drink and seeing what happens...crazy???

Johnston

Moderation failed for me in the long run. The main problem was tolerance. Once I could no longer get the same buzz from two drinks I had to have more. Then it all went downhill.

OklaBH

You can do what you want but I promise your alcoholism has waited for you. Anytime i tried to take a field trip within a couple days I picked up right where I left off. The only difference was it was 10 times harder to get sober when I lost control again. The last drink isnt what keeps me held hostage, its the very first sip. If your still obsessing over it, try so face to face support. I hate to see anyone suffer because I know the feeling.

Swanee

Autumn

I am not not sure I am even qualified to comment. My AW has tried moderation for several years. She had been a closet drinker for years and grew up in a family that looking back, both her parents were alcoholics. Her older brother is now a couple years sober and doing great from his alcoholism. His was a very bad story that nearly cost him everything. Now he attends AA several times a week and is totally alcohol free. He is doing fantastic.

Our story - mine and my wife's does not have as horrible moments as her brother's. She attends AA once a week. She has always been afraid that people will find out she is an alcoholic. In social situations she is afraid not to drink because people will know. We are now in a time in our family that three or four times a year, my wife has a battle or a melt down and falls apart for a few days. It is followed by her not drinking a drop for many months and she feels great.

So what I am wondering is if this idea of moderation is something that keeps my wife from becoming 100% free and 100% healthy.

I am no expert, things were really bad at my house last week. I have behaviors I need to change and problems I need to own my self.

Good luck to you. I hope you make the right choices for you.

Dave36

Absolutely. Tolerance is the main problem. I could start drinking again tonight and a 6 pack would do me fine. By next weekend I'd be back up to 15-18 beers a night. I'd be right back to square one in a week.

Dee74

My addiction duped me everytime I came back to drinking. I'd drink like a gentleman for one, two, three or even more times...and then BAM I'd right back to how it used to be.

You might be different - but being on this site makes it doubtful Autumn. -

I also tend to think only a drinker like me would categorise 1 to 1.5 bottle of wine as a 'relatively small amount'.

I'd step pretty carefully Autumn - I'm afraid that you're trying to sell yourself a little bit of denial here?

D

jazzfish

I always need to ask myself what kind of life do I want and what does the actual evidence support as a way to get there. This is a dangerous place to be because it is so easy to get caught up in the circular logic of alcoholism. It seems there is always some logical sounding out to steer you away from the evidence, to steer you toward an exception in your experience. I would love to be a normal drinker, but I have 30 years of evidence that says its not going to happen. Do I really need 31 years? Has anything changed since I had 10 years of evidence, or 5 years?

IOAA2

Hi and congratulations on your sober period.

Alcoholism comes in many flavors from people who drink every day into blackouts to people who have drinking sessions months apart. It’s what alcohol does to us, which is often that we don’t have a problem.
I suggest going to a lot of meetings and listen to the persons feelings as opposed to the drinking moments.
It’s called identification which is the reason I prefer to hear woman speakers. If there are woman meetings in your area I’d suggest attendance.

BE WELL

sugarbear1

if you are attending meetings of AA, why not participate in the program of recovery and work those 12 steps and see what happens?

those steps saved my life

24hrsAday

I keep "thinking">>>> they say it's 10% drinking 90% thinking... or so i have heard THEM in AA say.
the bottom line decision is yours to make. (i was a year and a half sober at 25) there is no telling how much different my life could have been... had i not DECIDED to go back out.

tomsteve

I'm not really sure what the " identify" with others stories is, but I do know what relating to them is, and if I related to the drinkin, I still had a lot further don't he scale to go to fit others drinking patterns.
But when I listened to the thinking, I was right there with the ones that ended up in psych wards, rehabs, on the streets,etc.

What I think that thought that ya have outgrown it is is possibly be what the big book talks about:
Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.

We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals - usually brief - were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.


Have ya read the big book?

tomsteve

A little more:
Despite all we can say, many who are real alcoholics are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic. If anyone who is showing inability to control his drinking can do the right- about-face and drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him. Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to drink like other people!

Here are some of the methods we have tried: Drinking beer only, limiting the number of drinks, never drinking alone, never drinking in the morning, drinking only at home, never having it in the house, never drinking during business hours, drinking only at parties, switching from scotch to brandy, drinking only natural wines, agreeing to resign if ever drunk on the job, taking a trip, not taking a trip, swearing off forever (with and without a solemn oath), taking more physical exercise, reading inspirational books, going to health farms and sanitariums, accepting voluntary commitment to asylums - we could increase the list ad infinitum.

We do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself. Step over to the nearest barroom and try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it
more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself about it. It may be worth a bad case of jitters if you get a full knowledge of your condition.

LBrain

one huge warning sign, you actually drove across town in a blackout,

Consider actually what that means, it means your brain was so used to alcohol that it sort of shut down and went into auto-pilot for you - it was able to recognize the situation and took over allowing the essential functions to get you through... reasoning and memory functions are not essential to living...

normal people would have been passed out and unable to function because their brain didn't have a clue what was happening.

I heard this once before and after looking back over the years, I believe it now.
"Once a blackout drinker, always a blackout drinker." It might not happen all the time, but if you drink again, eventually you will have more blackout events. I'm pretty sure of it.

SoberLeigh

Welcome to SR, Autumn; glad you found us. Attempts at moderation never, ever worked on my favor; they were complete failures. There may have a time or two, where I had only one or two, but that was purely 'situational' and always because that was all the wine that was available.

If you read around the site, you will see countless stories of attempts at moderation. Some have a few successful days or weeks but soon find themselves careening down that slippery slope looking in brake failure. For some, this is after many years of sobriety.

As sugarbear suggested, why not try the 12 Steps, giving it all you've got? If you find you are unsuccessful, there are other methods and techniques.

We are here for you, Autumn.

Soberwolf

Congrats on 10 months Autum dont listen to your AV

The fact your AV is suggesting this should tell you all you need to know

autumn4

Thankyou everyone for replying to my post ..your replies have helped me so much and my resolve to stay on the recovery path and change my core identity to being a non-drinker.
I can especially relate to the statement "once a blackout drinker..always a blackout drinker" as I had a blackout after my first experience with alcohol and have had many more than I can remember in the last 35 years of my drinking.
At the very least I have an alcohol processing disorder with a mental obsession.
The label alcoholic causes me so much shame and pain as I saw what it did to both my parents and never ever wanted to end up like them.

NYCDoglvr

It's not how much one drinks, it's what happens when we drink, and like every other alcoholic, you went into blackouts. People can tolerate different amounts. E.g., I've heard people say they downed a bottle of hard spirits, for me it was two bottles of wine a day that did it. As they say in AA, "try to identify with the feelings of the speaker, not the details." You don't have to justify yourself at meetings. If you say you're an alcoholic, you are. That and a buck is all that's required for membership,lol. I've heard people say they're addicts and pot is their drug of choice. HUH? Well I don't particularly like pot and don't want it. But I sure believe people whey they say they're addicted.

Congratulations on ten months!

DayTrader

Hey Autumn. There were times I could moderate too, but I couldn't do it every time. Prior go going out, I definitely couldn't tell if this would be a time I could or couldn't moderate. Basically, it was a shot in the dark - although the %'s leaned more towards NOT controlling the amount.

The fact that I could sometimes control it (and I should note, when I was controlling it I wasn't usually having a great time drinking. It wasn't really all that much fun - not nearly as much fun as when I just threw caution to the wind and let it rip at the bar) made my first step difficult. How could I admit powerlessness over booze once I started if I sometimes displayed power? What did it for me was the consequences were going up (drunk driving arrests) and the realization that drinking was becoming like Russian roulette in reverse..... five bullets and one empty chamber....and I was hoping for that empty chamber every time even though I knew those were not the odds.

I also made the decision that someone who has power over something has power over it all the time. Gambling was the example I used. I can walk by a casino or a slot machine every time. I don't feel compelled to gamble and once I start, it's not a big deal to walk away. That, to me, was power. That type of power I was not able to display with booze..... so I went with "lack of power" when it comes to drinking. It helped that about halfway into the AA book they talk about lack of power......which to me means some power but definitely not enough. Like a losing sports team with good players......lots of potential.......but they keep on losing more than winning. That made sense for my life - and it also helped with the second part of step 1: My life has become unmanageable. With enough power it would have been and sometimes it was....but on the overall, I wasn't winning too many games.

Hope that helps.

LBrain

autumn, recognizing and acknowledging that if you drink again all bets are off is important. It is what you do with this information that counts.
I think you'll be fine going forward as a long as you don't drink or think you can ever get away with just one again.

ru12

Autum you don't have to call yourself an alcoholic. You can just be a woman that doesn't drink if that suits you better. Labels are for soup cans.