Itchy

Well casualroom?
One post? What do you think? This place works best if you interact.

How are you doing today?

Nattythreads

The amount of mental effort and time I expended on convincing myself that moderation was achievable was astounding. And ultimately pointless.

Eleni58

Two people here said it best: "If you have to control your drinking, it's already out of control."

The only time I did "controlled" drinking was when I made the plan to taper down. My goal was to get to zero drinks and I did it! The only reason I decided to taper instead of cold turkey was because I was scared of my body going into shock if I went from 10 drinks a day to no drinks.

Nuudawn

If you want to make a lifestyle change (and sobriety ..or ..er um..moderation would fall into that category) I believe it's vital to find people you resonate with. You may or may not with AA...you may convince yourself when hearing other stories "you're not that bad and therefore don't have problem"...that can be a tricky one (was for me).

In order to "control" your drinking, I do believe being able to be " completely abstinent" on occasions where it would feel normal or knee jerk to drink would be part of that control. I believe that the only way to know if you do have COMPLETE control would be to try a period of abstinence first..where you take drinking completely out of the equation and occasion. Can you do a month of abstinence and then re-assess?

Ohio1

If you are 35, overweight, don't exercise, and can recite the McDonald's combos 1-15 off the top of your head open heart surgery is overkill, but you will get there if you don't change some things- its easier now.

It might take 30 years, but you will have that heart attack, you will have to make all the lifestyle changes anyway (if you live) and you will be way worse off having lost 30 years and parts of your heart muscle.

whiskeyman

For me , AA was the only thing that saved my life.
and I tried every avenue to quit, AA being last.

It should have been first.
I am a believer that if the world worked that principles of AA it would sure be a better place.

StarlessNight

No, AA is for anyone who feels they have a problem with alcohol. "The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking." Maybe you're one of those rare people who can moderate after falling into habitual heavy drinking, but that is the exception rather than the rule. If you try it and it doesn't work, that's your answer. (If you're curious, there is information online about "harm reduction" moderation methods.)

When you say happy/tired drunk I am guessing you are a beer or wine drinker? (Correct me if I am wrong.) There are plenty of those in AA — beer drinkers who never blacked out but were more or less constantly intoxicated to some degree. Beer and wine drinkers often think that because they are not drinking the "hard" stuff that they don't have as much of a problem.

There is a passage in the Big Book about this. Page 31, paragraph 3:

http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf

Please read. Only you can make this decision for yourself. For what it's worth, trying out AA never killed anybody. What do you have to lose by giving it a shot? You list excellent reasons for wanting to quit. You acknowledge that alcohol is starting to call the shots; it is interfering with your life. Again, only you can decide if you have a problem, but keep looking inward and be honest with yourself about your relationship with alcohol...the answers will come in time.

Good luck to you!

Lost3000

Hi R,

I felt a lot like you when I first quit. I quit many times before, and every time found myself right back where I didn't want to be. It began to be a royal pain, trying to manage/moderate. One day I realized I just didn't want to go on in this life. I was ready to check out. A friend of mine killed himself, and I thought, wow, he's lucky. To just check out like that.

Anyway, I found myself in AA. I wasn't court ordered, wasn't having threats from my husband. I had a great job, owned a house, car, all those nice things. Heck, I'm a working professional. But I decided I wanted to quit and those people in AA had done it.

It was tough at first, in fact, if you click on my name you'll see some of my early posts, arguing about how AA wasn't for me. Kind of funny seeing as though now I believe it really saved me. I used to ask myself, am I really an alcoholic? Isn't this a bit overboard, AA?

I got over it. I decided that I didn't care if I was really an alcoholic, I just wanted to quit. I did their program, and stuck with it. Now, I don't have to worry about moderating, or keeping myself from getting out of control. I'm happily just one of those people who don't drink.

Hope this helps.

ckoures

I can only offer this: AA's principals are not only good tools for dealing with an addiction, they are excellent tools to plan how to live your life.

Lost3000

Sorry, I wasn't trying to push any type of program. It's mine though, and it's part of my story. Really though, it's how I came about realizing that moderation wasn't going to work, and even if I could make it work, it was horrible torture just trying to make it work. Just too complicated, and more often than not, if I was really honest with myself, I couldn't moderate.

wpainterw

Casualroom: I cannot tell you what to do. I cannot say that you have lost "control". I cannot say that you are an "alcoholic" and that you must try AA. Those things are for you to decide. All I can and will say is that, based on my own experience, if I were you I would get the best professional advice possible to determine a prognosis if you continue doing what you say you're doing and make your own decision based on that prognosis. It is my view (and I may be wrong) that no program or regime will work in the long run unless the patient really wants it to work. As the old saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." That applies here except that the horse in question may be well advised to stop drinking. That's up to the horse.

W.

wakko

If you can control your drinking than likely you're not an alcoholic. If you're an alcoholic you likely can't control your drinking. This is one of those sad facts of life you just have to learn to accept if you're going to give up drinking

EndGameNYC

AA was the Last Chance Cafe for me as well.

I long ago was able to let go of the agony of having wasted so much time and causing so much pain and suffering in my life.

We can get back a lot of things in Sobriety. Time is not one of them.

Natom

I'm not in AA however I am in NA and the same basic principles apply. I initially tried to regulate my drug and alcohol consumption. It did work for a period of time but I always went back to the same amount I was using or more. Moderation does work for some people. I know people that I was in rehab with who, on the exterior, look like they are living a productive life with minimal but regular alcohol consumption...and that's fine, for them. I cannot do moderation. It's one or the other. By all means try and moderate but if you find you can't then it may be time to quit it completely.

whiskeyman

love this