Why can't logic beat this?
 

I am a hypocrite!

I know, and I see, the destruction that alcohol wreaks on individuals and on society. It's easy to see it!

Yet I keep drinking.

I have a hundred solid arguments about why I should stop drinking. But I keep doing it!

I don't even want to socialise when I drink, 'cause I have learned from past experiences that a hangover is easier without the social humiliation.

Why can't logic beat this?

Seems Nonsensical, doesn't it? :)

But here's your answer:

Because the alcoholic living in your head can't be reasoned with.
It can't be educated.
It can't be shamed, threatened, or bargained with.

It must be starved.

Welcome to the fight of your life.

You can do this. :ring

Cunning, baffling and powerful addiction is.

I think it can, but it might be harder than other options. Here's how it goes:

1) Psychology and self-examination. There are reasons we drink. It doesn't happen to everyone. If you can get to the bottom of those reasons you can move on to step two.

2) Apply cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques to realign your thinking about yourself and your world. This requires a lot of daily vigilance. A lot.

Other options, AVRT and AA, are in a sense shortcuts. Not really logical at all. They may be inverse to each other, but they both invoke some "other" presence, beyond the self, to take the credit or the blame. If you can take that route go for it. It's probably easier. It may be logically a fiction, but it can work.

Welcome Nobones.
This saying described me quite well "I do not understand my own behaviour. I set out to do the things I want to do and end up doing the things I hate. For though the will to do good is in me, the performance is not" I think it comes from the bible, so it is an old dilemma.

I suppose logic has a certain force to it but it is insufficient in alcholics of my type. Lack of power was my problem. I had to find a power by which I could live, and it had to be greater than me, obviously.

I found that solution in AA. Today I have the power to stay sober, the power to have relationships, the power to make a living, the power to do all sorts of things I could not do before. A spiritual problem requires spiritual solution is a logical way to look at it.

I don't think you can apply logic to an addiction that is completely illogical. I can apply logic to recovery, but not to active alcoholism.

I have to accept that I AM an alcoholic and there is no undoing this addiction. There is no reboot back to 'normal' drinking. And frankly, I don't want to drink normally. I don't want 1 or 2 drinks. I want oblivion. Because I'm an addict. Not very logical, but very factual.

The longer I fight that fact, the longer I will continue to dance with alcohol and hope that I will lead. Take the alcohol out of the equation entirely, then logic starts to apply.

Addiction affects the emotional/primal parts of our brain, which trump the executive function/logic parts every time.

AVRT gets this and tries to make us see that the addiction is not us (the executive function) but it (the animal in us).

Bottom line is, as Mike said, it doesn't make sense, it just is.

And if you wait until you feel like it, you never will.

But if you just do it, eventually you will feel like it.

Its a trust thing, but we have all been there.

And lets face it, what do you have to lose.

I know I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

And in the time since stopped, I have never woken up and said, why didn't I get sh*t faced last night...

Its a question of quitting and then never quitting the decision.

Simple but not easy, but do-able.

Drinking for me became a physical addiction born from my emotional center.

Logic was peripheral to that, and hence, little help when in active addiction.

It has been very useful in reflecting on what led me to drink, but only
when out of the active cycle and when I was physically and psychologically more stable in sobriety.

If you are trying for answers in the midst of the cycle, you are putting yourself more at risk.

Sort of like standing up when someone is shooting at you and asking
"Why are you doing this?"

It don't really matter or help at that moment.
Just a dangerous distraction.

Quit and analyse later if needed.
Many find they don't need to know why once they quit.

You can do it.

Thanks guys, for the replies!

You have given me some solid points to think on.

I do believe that there is a power greater than us. But I want to believe that we can control our own fates.

Thanks Pelagic263, I have not heard of CBT. I think I will look into this more, as it seems to strike a chord with me.

Again, thanks for your support here. I'm going to whine at you guys more as these cravings start to come back at me, over the coming days.

IMO and IME, and in short answer form.

LOGIC can only be applied once I accept my alcoholism and am living in recovery. By that I mean, I have learned and keep learning that one of the most important things I can do for my sobriety is to "make the next RIGHT choice"; and that I am either choosing to move toward continued sobriety or away from it. Logic is part of the game plan, so to speak, because I have accepted that I am an alcoholic, now - what's the solution, what am i going to do about it??

Trying to think my way out, around, and beyond my alcoholism with whys and wherefores? Kept me drinking a very long time.

As you often hear, "alcoholism [addiction] is the only disease that tells you that you don't have it while killing you."

When my values and beliefs were no longer aligned with my actions and behaviors I finally made a decision to take action. Alcohol had become my solution to living - I had to find other solutions, but it became apparent I needed help. My bootstrapping mentality simply did not work.

One alcoholic sharing with another how they recovered can be very helpful in my experience. SR has been an important part of that process for me along with a program of recovery.

keep coming back

I believe in logic and values and beliefs overcoming this rotten disease. But they have to be elevated over the sick desires of your Beast.

Nonsensical said it right:

"It must be starved.

Welcome to the fight of your life."

That's it.

I agree with the oft expressed sentiment that willpower alone can't beat the Beast. Willpower alone is not enough - you can't keep convincing yourself you shouldn't pick up the poison if you haven't yet convinced yourself that the poison does NOTHING for you. A permanent state of abstaining solely based on willpower fails because your beliefs and values haven't logically evolved to understanding that the poison does nothing for you. There are urges and desires but if you are convinced in your self or selfs that the poison is just that, a poison, then the urges can be starved with logic.

For me, and it took a long time, I had to convince my Self that the drink does NOTHING for me. It doesn't relax me. It doesn't give me peace. It doesn't give me confidence. BELIEVING those things gives me the leverage to dismiss and surf my urges.

Great topic, thank you for posting.

Keep it up.

I disagree . The Higher Power concept makes a lot of sense to me. It is extremely difficult to quit on your own. I know I need help. Support. To me, the Higher Power is manifested by the community of people who are going through what I am going through, or who have and have licked this thing, to offer support and guidance. They help take on what we are incapable of doing — knowing how to get through this thing.

It is also part of realizing many things are beyond our control. Letting things go, and concentrating on what we can control. It all makes perfect sense to me.

But I also agree that alcoholism is a multi-faceted problem that requires action on many fronts, like confronting underlying issues like anxiety and depression that must be treated through mechanisms such as those you suggest.

But at the end, whatever works for folks is all good.

Very interesting thread and replies. I am a type one diabetic wearing an insulin pump, and I continued to drink heavily for like 3 years. I could have seriously injured or killed myself during one of my drunken episodes. That behavior absolutely defies logic.

Then again, we are all here, all working towards sobriety. Logic hasn't completely gone to the wayside.

Sacrificing your life to alcohol is illogical.

Starving the Beast to death is logical.

How we get there is different for everyone.

Until I accepted the fact that I was an alcoholic, logic didn't stand a chance. To expect otherwise is illogical. I admitted I was an alcoholic long before I accepted that I was an alcoholic. The reason was lingering denial. All denial needed to be stripped before I could accept the stark, cold, hard fact that I was indeed an alcoholic. Once I did that, logic stood a better chance of being applied.

logic works just fine for me, & for plenty of other people. have a look at one of the secular recovery methods - SMART, AVRT, SOS, etc. - and/or CBT as someone has mentioned above. SR even has a sub-Forum for these methods :)

Well, this isn't a logical problem. This is a physical addiction.

If you want to be logical about it, this is like breathing, or eating. Except, you don't die if you quit. You suffer a bit but, that ends.

I actually think we are essentially in agreement. Your HP is the "gathering of drunks" concept of God, and the power of that is undeniable! I guess I was thinking of the stricter version of Steps 1-3 in the BB. Those steps can stymy a lot of people, some of whom sort of skip over them, arguably with no ill effect.

Thanks for this thread BTW. It has been very helpful to hear our various perspectives on this topic.

in a way logic can.

the brakes on my car are bad. i dont know how to fix them, but there is a brake shop that can, so i will take my car there to get them fixed.
logic told me it would be best to find someone to fix them rather than try it myself and end up opening a can of worms.

i couldnt stop drinking on my own. it took me YEARS of illogical thinking- thinking i could do it on my own- until i surrendered,admitted i couldnt do it on my own,and reached out for help from people that had recovered from alcoholism-people in AA.
that was the first logical thought i had in years and i acted on that logic.