Nonsensical

As I make this journey from alcohol dependence to alcohol independence, one of the issues I find most difficult to deal with is the screw up. The slip, relapse, tumble off the wagon - a.k.a. drinking.

Ultimate victory over this addiction/affliction/disease/condition means perfection. Zero consumption, ever. While there are some recovery methods that claim you can transition from addiction to moderation, I don't believe that would ever work for me. I've tried it about 800 times. Going for 801 seems pointless. I am skeptical that anyone who is truly addicted, as I am, could ever return to moderation - but it's not for me to decide for others. I have decided for myself, and the only acceptable standard is never, ever drinking alcohol.

That's a rigorous standard - perfection. Failure to attain it can feel just like...ummmm....failure. Shame, guilt, embarrassment, low self-esteem have followed all of the times I have been drunk since I decided I had to give up alcohol. From reading these forums I know I'm not alone in that regard. Every week there are posts from members who drank and are now filled with shame, guilt and regret. Every week members disappear, and we can only hope they are doing OK without us.

I don't want to condone drinking by anyone who is an addict who wants to stop, but we have to give ourselves some room for error. If I took a calendar of the past 4 months and colored the days I drank in red and the days I did not drink in green it would be a very green calendar. If I did the same for the last 4 months of 2012 it would be a very red calendar. (Thanks Weasel1966 for giving me that mental illustration.)

Perfection is still the ultimate goal, and I can't yet claim it. But, significant progress has been made. The message I am trying to convey to my fellow alcohol addicts is this:
Drinking does not equal failure.

Giving up equals failure.

Don't let a slip/stumble/tumble/few days of drunkenness turn you permanently from the pursuit of perfection. Get back on that horse and ride. We can do this.

ScottFromWI

While I agree that drinking/slipping up/relapsing doesn't mean total failure, trying to rationalize it ahead of time or minimize it doesn't help the cause. And it will have consequences.

mecanix

Nice post Non ,

For myself dealing with life sober was a whole set of life skills i had to practaice and learn before becoming proficient at managing the up's and down's without recourse to alterd states of mind .

Bestwishes, M

ElegantlyWasted

Way to keep it positive. When I would start drinking again I was all in. I looked at it as black and white and never allowed myself a "slip" or day pass or what ever you want to call it. Question Nonsensical (Baconator) : do you think moderation is a possibility for you or do you feel you need to totally abstain? Progress not perfection... I know my sobriety for the last 27 days has not been perfect in and of itself, but I have not drank and things are getting better. I was never able to moderate to any extent. You have done so. Keep it rockin' and thanks for the post. Anything different you could try if your goal is to be totally dry?

coming_clean

Being human = being imperfect

Being human = keep trying and succeeding against all odds.

Nonsensical

Moderation is not a realistic possibility in my life.

hypochondriac

The way I see this is that everyone deserves a freakin medal for every day sober, doesn't matter if it's a day in the first few months or after decades. That doesn't mean that it's really hard to live without alcohol, it's not, it's actually very freeing and I think we can all agree that being sober removes many complications in life. But to actually go against the grain and retrain your attitude after alcohol dependence takes guts. I haven't come across many non addicts who have done this never mind attempted it and I think everyone should have a huge amount of pride in their sobriety. Having little slip ups is obviously not good because it means that some part of you is still stuck in the old way of thinking, but that is only natural and it doesn't diminish the achievement that went before it x

Weasel1966

Thanks non for this post. It helped me today.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Somewhat like beauty. For some perfection is a single day. A month. A lifetime. But how do I get there?

For me personally I cannot moderate. I must abstain. But also for me .... I have never been perfect at anything. And when I have become perfect... An expert.... I get bored with it and move on. So my plan is to work in small increments. A day seems all I can handle right now. I will abstain and attain perfection for the goal I set. Maybe over time reaching daily perfection will be the norm and I can look to measuring my perfections in larger increments.

I like the way you think about things. Makes sense to me.

Joe Nerv

Interesting take on this. Yes, if we want to stay sober we need to keep the drink down, perfectly. But that, to me, sounds like a total setup for failure. Perfectly can be used to describe about a 1000 things I need to do each day. To allow yourself room to not do it perfectly means to me to not be ready yet to stop. And gives reason to beat yourself up when you fail.

Drinking from time to time keeps the addiction alive and well. When we truly release it and let it go, it dies.

I was fortunate with alcohol. Dove right in with detox, a rehab, outpatient counseling and AA. Quitting smoking I wasn't so lucky. What I found when I finally quit for good was that all my other attempts helped, as they were practice for when I was truly ready to throw the towel in.

If drinking less, then you're doing something right. When the time is right you'll be done with it. I wouldn't get too hung up on ideas like that of doing this, or anything, perfectly.

2granddaughters

They told me in 1989 when I went into the Recovery Home that I had a 5% drinking problem and a 95% thinking problem.

Since that day I have been 100% dry (that took care of the drinking problem) and about 50/50 in the thinking problem.

My thinking today is my "imperfect sobriety". I haven't craved or needed a drink for decades.

All the best.

Bob R

LookingOut

I know that my good sober time matters, a lot. But I have to warn that each time I relapse now, it seems harder to quit each time. I have to start trying for that perfection because I am afraid if I don't, I might give up.

CharlieNoogan

There is no need to chase perfection. Seeking perfection illustrates the need to control outcomes that makes us sick in the first place. Chronic relapse is a symptom of addiction after all, so the fact that you slip up only confirms that you are an alcoholic.

I think it's best to not beat yourself up too badly, but to try to learn from your mistakes.

I have found success in focusing on dealing with today, and putting the concept of never drinking again out of my mind.

When I get an urge to drink, I tell myself "not today." Maybe tomorrow, but not today. The Serenity Prayer helps me realize that I can change my thinking today and that I do not have to worry about the past I cannot change nor what will happen in the future.

Saliena

It took me many slips... and with each slip I lowered my standards of myself and my dream of having a sober life just alittle lower. I was one of the ones that had to lose everything to know that I couldn't do this alone. Thanks to SR and a supportive network I have been sober for 18 months. I still only have today... and only look at today.

courage2

Great thread, Nonsensical. I don't look at not drinking at all = perfection. For me not drinking = hope of sanity. Drinking would be an act of self-destruction, not failure. I've also never understood the language of "slips" like it was an accident, because it would be an act of will for me to drink. That's just my situation though -- I don't fault other people who quit gradually -- you could say if you wanted to that I quit gradually over the course of >30 years.

Best wishes to you on your journey.

Dee74

I went back to drinking a lot - relapse is not a part of recovery, but it sure was my constant companion on the long and windy way to getting here.

I'm an expert relapser, champeen of the world 1987-2007
I get why people relapse.

I don't think we should make any kind of virtue of it though.

The problem with me is I'd give my self 'room for error'... and end up moving the goalposts too much....

so much in fact as to make the whole exercise meaningless.

Not drinking is the best way for me to be.
If I compromise on that, I'm letting myself down.

D

Woozy

Thanks for posting this, I needed to hear that.

Grungehead

It's interesting how alcoholics have many similarities yet we can be so different. I first got sober in 1990 and have only had 2 relapses in 23 years. But one was for a year and one was for 8 years. I have 34 days now. Both of my relapses got really scary towards the end and were very big deals. I do not believe that relapses are part of recovery but they are common and should not deter someone from continuing to keep trying till it sticks. At the same time you never know when one of those relapses will take you where mine took me...or worse.

fini

Drinking does not equal failure.

Giving up equals failure.

Don't let a slip/stumble/tumble/few days of drunkenness turn you permanently from the pursuit of perfection. Get back on that horse and ride. We can do this.

Non,
you're a logical thinker, but this doesn't compute.
you're talking about two different things here:
drinking again DOES equal failure. drinking again is failure at not drinking. if that is the goal. there is only ultimately one way to achieve not drinking, and that is not to drink.
no room for error there. it IS black and white.

that is not the same as giving up or not trying again if you've drunk again.
if you mix up the turning away from trying again with anything like "room for error" in drinking again you're setting up a scenario where the thing that is the ultimate goal is to continually improve the number of green instead of eliminating the red.
it's an ongoing "permission to drink once in a while as long as the "once in a whiles" are getting rarer. or further apart. or not entirely out of hand. or..."
you're not shutting the door that way.

soberlicious

Well, if your goal is to not drink, then continued drinking means you have not met your goal. That doesn't mean you're a bad person, it just means you have not met your goal. How long you want to take to meet your goal is entirely up to you.

littlefish

How about using some new vocabulary? I don't really equate my sobriety to perfection. Perfection implies, to me at least, reaching a perfect state, that it's done, a static, unchanging thing. I have found that sobriety is far from perfect, is a changing, growing and definitely not a static thing.

I keep growing in sobriety. Like an explorer discovering a new land, I keep wandering into new, amazing environments I couldn't have dreamed of. I trip and stumble, too, though.

I also understand relapsing. It took me about 2.5 years to get sober. Lots of relapsing. I don't look back on my relapsing as failing. Even though I defined it that way at the time. Looking back, I define it as "not getting it" yet.

Ultimately it didn't boil down to a battle between self-control, giving up or being disciplined. It was more about having a profound mental change, a psychic change when I truly equated alcohol with poison, on a deeply personal and emotional level. Not just on the intellectual level.

Sure, I repeated to myself hundreds of times on the intellectual level that I couldn't drink because I cannot process alcohol like normal people, but I didn't truly believe it. The thinking remained on the logical level, open to tweaking and tinkering and discussion. I had to reach the state of belief: having a profound change of my basic values and my perception of myself as someone who is not quite normal, and then embraced that.

I guess the vocabulary word I might suggest instead of perfection is "growth".