"I can't drink" vs. "I don't drink"
 

If I tell myself I can't drink when I'm triggered, I feel frustrated and overwhelmed and have a hard time distracting myself. Do you find empowerment by telling yourself "I don't drink" or "I really don't want this"? What are some ways to avoid feeling overwhelmed, deprived and frustrated when you're craving? Or worse yet, when people around you are encouraging you to imbibe with the group?

Having a solid recovery program/plan at your disposal is vital in my opinion. And by a plan I mean meetings, rehab, counseling, self-help, SR or any combination of those or others. Simply telling yourself something or using willpower alone is very, very difficult and most cannot sustain it over time.

Regarding your second point, the best solution is to just not hang out with people who encourage you to drink. If you aren't a drinker, you really have no good reason to be in those types of situations anyway. Certainly you CAN, but it's not really the best idea. Getting sober means making major changes to your life, and one of those changes might include changing who you spend time with and where you do it.

You have the solution at hand, you are even aware of it. It is the mind shift between "can't" drink to "don't" drink.

Can't drink comes from the position of deprivation. So of course you are upset and frustrated. Don't drink comes from a position of decision. You are choosing sobriety. It's an affirmation against your addiction, coming from a place of strength, but more importantly, from a place of acceptation.

Great topic that I learned about in rehab recently. Out group psychologist suggest that we should not say/think "I can't drink" because that is not true- we can drink. it is legal, it is inexpensive, it is available everywhere. We actually can. We should also not say/think "I don't want to drink" because that can often be a lie. There are times when we might really feel like we want to drink- a craving in early sobriety or maybe years down the line at a special occasion. She suggested we say/think "I choose not to drink" because it it honest, and it gives us the power- we are making a healthy decision for ourselves. I think that would line up most with "I don't drink"

After six years plus sober, I really don't want to drink at all. Just the thought of it brings a sense of revulsion. And I'm so happy with my sober life that I rarely get thoughts of drinking. :)

In AA they say to just say 'I won't drink today'. It might help with the frustruation and the overwhelming thought that i'll never drink again.

For myself, being aware of the AV, 'The beast', helps a lot. Then I tell myself, it's not me that wants the drink, it's the beast'. It feels less depriving.

I used to use the term I don't drink for a very long time and never really thought about it much, one day my better half asked me why I used the word don't when asked if we are out yet whenever we talked about it I always used the word can't.....made me think.

So I still use don't but if I asked why which does happen sometimes, I reply because I can't and enough said.

Andrew

I think it might depend on where you are personally in your own recovery. If there's a part of you that still wants to drink or hasn't accepted you can't, saying I can't does seem like a deprivation.

I've accepted I can't drink so saying so is not a deprivation but more of an explanation of why I might not be at that moment. Or saying something like "I used to but it no longer agrees with me".

I use which ever one suits the situation at the time it's needed.

Depends on the situation but for the most part I don't drink.

Of course I can drink, it's gonna be horrible and I'll regret it, but I can totally do it. When I'm saying I can't drink I usually follow it up with 'safely'. I can't drink safely. I have to remind myself where that one refreshing, ice cold, drink will get me.

Time - All feelings pass.

Honesty - Using is always an option, but if I use a slew of negative consequences ALWAYS happens.

Accountability and Connection - Talk to another person in recovery and tell them how you are feeling. Call before you use.

Hope - Get involved in recovery and witness the results in other people, and eventually in yourself.

Common Sense - Don't hang out with people who are using. If a situation makes you uncomfortable, leave.


Can I use? Yes I can. Can I use without horrific consequences? No I can't. Every day I make the decision not to use and then I stick to it. I didn't use today. All the other good things in my life today are a direct result of that.

And that is the final word folks.

I don't know who your 'they' are, but neither myself nor any of my AA recovered friends have ever said this. We go by what the book (Alcoholics Anonymous) says........: "...if you really and truly want to quit drinking liquor for good and all..."

That's 'for good and all' (like forever); NOT just today.

(o:

Ha, trach this thread made me think of you! I have had past good advice from you on this very topic.

Yes it resonates with me too, because wah wah I want to drink but I can't. End whiny rant.

Truth is I can drink, but I know I don't want to- too many failed attempts to manage drinking have taught me that. It really is more empowering to think about it as a choice I make - and definitely true. If I choose to drink, a ton of bad things will happen, so I choose not to drink. Problem solved. In my opinion the best kind of problem to have is one which I know the solution to. ;)
(Doesn't mean it's easy, but I know what the right choice is for me.)

Also to address the second part of your question, I could repeat what I have seen wise Dee post many times - dealing with frustration, peer pressure, what have you - I remove drinking as an option from the table.
It's getting to the place of acceptance that drinking is not a possibility, even tho there might be frustrations, peer pressure.....So then the hard part becomes what's next.....

One more final post hyper - not sure how much sober time you have - but it will be frustrating at times, not sure that can be avoided. So can you make a plan for how you'll deal with the frustration when it rears its ugly head??

I don't drink.

I CAN do whatever I want. I won't take away my ability to chose. That is the important part of things.

I hear a lot of people in AA say the won't drink today. It's called taking it one day at a time and is a main theme in AA.

I would be interested in your AA friends who say they are recovered. I never hear that in the rooms of AA that I attend. Saying you are recovered implies that you are over something and have "won". I don't use recovered or recovery myself but other people in AA often say they are in recovery.

I simply say I don't drink and leave it at that. If someone wants to know why I say I use to drink but had issues from it so I don't drink anymore. Simple as that.

'One day at a time' is NOT a main theme of AA. There's nothing in AA literature that says anything close to that. It comes from the second verse of the Serenity Prayer................: Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time...

In other words, 'one day at a time' is how we live our life, not how we quit drinking, which we do as per the BB.....for good and all.

I'm sorry you don't hear 'recovered' in your AA rooms.............it's straight from the book.

(o:

P.S. and btw, I certainly 'can' drink; I choose not to.

If i'm in a group who are trying to encourage me to imbibe , i'm probably with the wrong group of people at that time and need to get out of there.
In my experience the worst people for doing that are people who drink too much .

Acceptance , wishing my life were somehow other than how it is causes me frustration .
By making sobriety the easy choice , by focusing on the bad consequences of alcohol whilst also focusing on the positives of sobriety i feel lucky when i wake up sober for another morning :)

keep on :You_Rock_
m

To come back to what to do in the moment to avoid feelings of deprivation... It is 100% about choice. The important thing in the moment is to remember what you're choosing between. For me, I'm choosing between having a good night with my friends (although I might get bored and leave earlier than some people depending on the conversation and how drunk people get)... or spending the rest of my night obsessively drinking as much as I can, probably hitting a liquor store on the way home, probably doing the same thing again tomorrow, probably not being sober again for a long time. In the moment it can feel like "get buzzed and have a silly night with my friends with no consequences" is one of the choices. But it's not. Once I reality check myself, I don't feel like I'm getting the bad end of the deal.

At the heart of this though is that I did have to grieve for that thing I'd lost. I'm probably still grieving it, although I feel it less now. I'm sad that I can't get the kind of good, no-consequences, socially acceptable drunk that I used to be able to. But I've come to terms that it's gone and there's nothing I can do to change that. My body doesn't work that way anymore. Just like calling my ex-boyfriend won't fix that messed up relationship into what I wanted it to be, putting alcohol into my body isn't going to make me that kind of drunk ever again. Sometimes things end and we have to move on. The choice happens within that framework.

Maybe this shows how AA is done a bit differently in different locations because in my area not drinking one day at a time is certainly a main theme in every meeting. I hear it said at least a dozen times a meeting from new folks to old time Big Book thumpers.

To me, if you are living life one day at a time then you are also not drinking one day at a time so I don't see the difference there.

We all perceive things differently but as long as we relate enough to help each other not drink and not be miserable is what matters.

1) I don't believe that AA should be different, anywhere; I believe it should follow the BB; which, as I said earlier, nowhere does it say anything like 'one day at a time;' it say we quit drinking for good.

2) I certainly greet each new day---one day at a time; if I thought I'd have to greet each day with something like 'I will not drink today,' or 'no xxxxxxxx today'.......my life would seem like a life sentence.

3) If I had to live my life not drinking 'one day at a time,' I would be miserable, but since I've recovered via the BB, there's not a chance with that.

(o:

Just wanted to say I got a lot out of this thread. Some great advice and bits of wisdom here.

I've also followed the Big Book and the advice of those with 30+ years of sobriety to stop drinking, or using any mind altering substances and to make my life better. I, like they, wake up each day and live life one day at a time. I can't live two days at a time so I do each one as it comes along and for close to 4 years the thought of drinking has not been involved with any of those days. My mindset is that I will never drink again but that still involves taking each day as it comes. The thought of drinking is just something I don't deal with, I don't think about because it's not an option for me but that is still taking things one day at a time just like everything in life. That all happened to me after I did a 4th and 5th step. The thought of drinking and that obsession completely left me. The most hard core Big Book folks I know always tell the newbies to take it one day at a time and it gets better. I see that work out in the meetings as people hang around and follow the program so I'm going to stick with that method of the Big Book.

I think the differentiation is an important one. I obviously can drink if I want to (unless I'm broke in Saudi Arabia or somewhere and even then I probably would have got one in my drinking days) so to say that you can't is making yourself unnecessarily vulnerable. To be able to say that you don't want to has to be an aspiration of an alcoholic, it is an empowerment that enables to you to fully appreciate sobriety rather than be a slave to it. As for people who pester you to have a drink tell them to **** off, there are few things more boring than a drunk.

How can you say that you follow the BB, and then say you don't drink...'n btw all my recovered friends have at least 30 years, which I will have achieved next month. ...also, '...or using any mind altering substances...' is definitely NOT AA. I guess we know different BB folks, or our definitions of hardcore different. You say you're going to stick with that method of the Big Book, that is NOT the method of the BB.........go back and check; 'one day at a time' is NOT mentioned in the BB; '...if you want to want drinking for good' is.

I quit 'for good and all' (that's for good, or forever) in June of 1986; no thinking about drinking or not drinking (one day at a time); that would have been a miserable life......

(o:

P.S. "...The most hard core Big Book folks I know always tell the newbies to take it one day at a time and it gets better one day at a time?..." Yes, we tell newcomers this in the beginning to get through rough patches, but we never tell them they'll need to do this for the rest of their lives.

I don't know any successful members of AA telling people they can smoke dope for do any drugs to get high and call themselves sober. If I remember correctly, you think that behavior is acceptable to do and still consider yourself sober. That really tells me all I need to know right there. Have a great day NoelleR. I'm going to live this day like all the rest, without any mind altering substances like everyone else I know who follows the program of AA. : ).

I don't drink.
I CAN drink any time I want to. I just choose not to. The consequences of my drinking are unacceptable to me.

LOLOL........You do NOT remember correctly. In a previous thread you posted your opinions regarding abstinence from 'all mind altering substances' as being AA, and I posted what AA had to say (AA has to do with alcohol and nothing more)............BIG difference...

One of my first lessons in recovery was to try to validate whatever I heard in meetings, or from any other AAer's, with AA literature. I suggested this to you back in April; it would appear you haven't taken my suggestion.......I prefer recovery from the BB; you seem to want to go by what folks say, even if not validated by AA literature. Be very careful with that; there's a lot of crap being spewed as AA which isn't even close

(o: