Fletch2468

Hi all back again, I do my same old routine, quit drinking doing great few weeks, months sober......and something happens!
Something in my head tells me its ok to have a drink now, you'll be fine, just the one. Yeah right! then a week or even 2 down the line after constant binging snap out of it and have to start all over again.

Ive been to AA meetings which some where good some where bad, but well worth going to. There they tell me its a disease and I probably will always have it and not be able to pick up again. But then I go to my drinksense councilor and she tells me its a problem, a problem that can be over come and one day I'll be able to drink again.
This just confuses me.

What are your thoughts on it SR family?

Dee74

I've seen many many posters who declare their drinking is simply a problem to overcome and they'll go back to 'normal' drinking one day - but I've never seen anyone who's done it for any significant length of time.

Hardly a scientific survey I grant you, but take from that what you will Fletch.

Drinking wrecked my life, my health, made me miserable as hell and damn near killed me - why would I want it to play any part in my life now?

Why would you Fletch?

D

tommyk

I try very hard (and succeeed), at remembering WHY I wanted to quit drinking.

Because it is very easy to forget. It is easy to forget the bad times.

Many people require an awful and/or tragic incident as a reminder.

I just know for a fact that I do not want to drink, especially just for today.

I'm not concerned at all about whether I will ever drink again - I'm living in today.

I realize that drinking 'sounds' like fun, until I 'play the tape all of the way through'.

Will you require a tragic incident as your reminder?

NEOMARXIST

You will never be able to drink non-alcoholically again. I rang the local alcohol and drug counselling helpline a couple of years ago and was referred to the local drink/drug counselor. He was absolutely useless and didn't have a clue about alcoholism as he is not an alcoholic/addict himslef. They practiced the harm-reduction, CBT model and quite frankly it's a load of B*llocks TBH. I came out having the counsellor tell me it was OK to carry on binging, as long as I kept it only to weekends, and that binge-drinking is something you need to grow out of and that he was the same when he was at UNI in the Rugby team. Utter rubbish and I left those meetings feeling more hopeless than when I went in and needless to say it was the green-light that I needed to go out for another 2 years drinking more and more and taking more and more drugs in the process. they fail to see that alcoholism is Progressive and thus will NEVER go away. There is no cure other than not taking that first drink, Something I have had to find out myself through bitter experience and a Drink-driving conviction.

Sikkisirus

PRISM (a UK alcohol concern group) teaches this also. They say a person can begin to control it again. I guess every organisation has its different views but the addict themselves will know whats right for them.

Fletch2468

I dont think there's anyway I can ever drink again, I dont think its a problem I can over come, well not from past experiences of relapse time and time again when I no 100% I should not be picking up that 1st drink.
Dee your right, I was that close to wrecking my life and losing everything, I dont want that, who does?
And Neo, the counsellor did make me feel like it was ok to carry on drinking, what utter nonsense!!

keithj

Welcome Fletch.

This is actually one of the least confusing elements of alcoholism. It's so common that they actually wrote about it. AA Big Book 1st Ed. says,
"We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink."

Despite hundreds upon hundreds of occassions of the same consequences happening to me when I drank, I still thought that I'd be able to get away with drinking. I thought those things wouldn't happen this time. It takes a huge amount of energy to maintain that level of delsuion and dishonesty.

A turning point in my recovery was knowing without a doubt that this next time was not going to be any different, and knowing I was going to drink anyway. That delusion was shattered. I knew I was without defense.

tkdan

All I can do is speak for myself. I know I will never be able to drink normally. I believe I have a disease. A disease that will tell me I don't have a disease. Question is; will I listen to the disease, or what I should already know about myself?

Tazman53

Fletch let us see if we can end the confusion.

Your car has broken down and first you take it to a mechanic who has spent years repairing cars and he tells you that you need a new set of brake pads, well you happen to mention what is going on with your car to your next door neighbor who has never repaired a car, he tells you "I just read in a book about cars and I think you need a new gas tank."

Are you going to listen to the mechanic who has the experience of fixing cars or are you going to listen to your neighbor who read a book about car repair who has no experience?

Okay I assume I know your answer to the above so let us put the above logic to your confusion.

You have a group of alcoholics who have experience, many years of accumulated personal and passed down experience telling you one thing and one individual who is not an alcoholic and knows only what he has read in books telling you something different.

Who logically should you listen to?

I tried for the first 35 years of my drinking to stop and then go back to drinking like a gentleman, I always wound up worse then I was before, the last 5 years of my 40 years of drinking I did not draw a sober breath.

From just my own personal experience I know I can never drink safely again, when I add the expereince of hundreds of thousands of other alcoholics in AA saying they discovered the same thing about thier drinking I know it will never be safe for me to drink again.

Wolfchild

It's ultimatly how i chose to live and what i chose to believe that matters most to me. Many people can tell me how to live and what they think is possible (or impossible!), but they cannot live inside my skin. i look at it this way, i am the rudder which God has his hand upon to guide my life. As long as what people are telling me is consistent with that, we can go there for awhile. If it isn't, then i need to trim my sail to continue moving forward.

keithj

I like the analogy, Taz. It's even simpler than that, though. I don't have to listen to anybody else for this part. I just have to look at my own experience.

Evaluating that experience honestly is the tricky part.