What is the solution?
 

Not picking up a drink no matter what. Do that every day.

It's simple, but sometimes not easy.

I'd say if you struggle doing that then reach out for some face to face help. AA, counseling, an outpatient program, rehab. Whatever it takes.

Make sobriety/not drinking the most important thing in your life for a period of time. After a few months, it gets easier. If you cannot do it on your own, seeking professional help is the responsible thing to do.

There isn't a single solution. But they share a number characteristics:

Commitment, acceptance, action, change.

Commitment to never drinking again. Acceptance that you can never drink again. Accepting that sobriety isn't a punishment. Doing whatever it takes to support that decision to quit drinking, and changing all the things in your life that don't support it.

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.

Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it-then you are ready to take certain steps.

At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.

Remember that we deal with alcohol-cunning, baffling,powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power-that One is God. May you find Him now!

Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.

Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11.Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can't go through with it." Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.

Total abstinence for this progressive disease
incorporating a program of recovery in all areas
of your life to achieve success in recovery/sobriety.

Learn all you can about addiction whether it
be with alcohol, drugs, prescription meds, etc.
Then with willingness, openmindedness and
honesty continue to listen, absorb and apply
this knowledge building a strong, solid foundation
to live your life upon moving forward.

For me, it's wanting to be sober more than I want to drink. And if you stay sober, eventually the desire to drink will fade away.

The best tactic I know for enduring sobriety is to practice gratitude every day. :)

For me, it took a negative consequence to make me fully committed to never being in that place again. Today, I deliberately take steps to maintain my mental health and not get in that place where the F its take over and numbing myself down is the best solution. I NEVER want to be there again. As others have said, I made my sobriety the most important thing in my life right now. When will that stop being the priority? I don't know. Maybe never, we'll see. But for today when I start down any of the paths that will take me to a drink I do something or somethings to take care of myself. I stay busy. I try to be helpful and get outside of myself. I wanted to be sober and in recovery for a while, but today I WANT to be sober and in recovery, and my resolve is that nothing is going to knock me off of that. If I can continue on the path I'm on, not drinking again will far and away be the most significant accomplishment of my life. To some that might sound sad and pathetic. It is what it is. I'm proud of the steps I'm taking and the changes I'm making. My goal is to come out of all this as a person I would be proud to call a friend and a partner. I had to like myself again, I hadn't for a long, long time. I do today. I don't like a lot of the things I've done, but I have peace in knowing I'm not doing them today. SR helps me a lot. I pray a lot. I take care of me, and I also know that whatever the negative thing or things are that my AV is using to tell me a drink will help, I know this too, shall pass.

I'd edit this just a bit - make sobriety the most important thing in your life - permanently. Always.

Being in recovery allows me to have Every. Single. Thing. I have now. My program (AA, so it also has a spiritual component that is very central for me) comes first, and it is the backdrop of my life.

Once I finally decided I was DONE drinking, I figured out how to live. That's what my action plan of AA provided me, and I built on that foundation from there.

The solution is not drinking alcohol. It's also actively accepting the fact that you cannot drink alcohol, and then making a plan so you don't.

I can tell you that the solution is not posting here and ignoring advice that's repeatedly given to you. It's also not posting here once after a binge and then disappearing until your next binge.

It's a choice HC - and a choice only you can make. Simple - just not easy.

What Scott said. Then leverage.

for me it committing to doing whatever was necessary for me not to pick up a drink again HC.

That meant changing my life absolutely fundamentally and sitting with a lot of uncomfortable things for a while.

It started off very uncomfortable...but I had support to help...and things got better with time :)

I really believe you can do this HC

D

for me, twofold:
solution to getting sober is not drinking.
solution for not relapsing is changing a whole bunch, mostly me:)
for that, the AA program hit the spot.

You.

Once you've accepted that, start taking some of the advise being given to you by the members here.

Don't ignore the things said that bother you the most, they're probably the most important.

Members respond because they want to see you succeed. if they didn't care, your threads would have only 1 post.

It's time to do something different, don't you think?

It gets so much easier after a few months out. I am over a year and a half and rarely think about it. But the first few weeks are brutal.

Willingness, honesty, and completely committing to sobriety with no reservations.

How is it going HC?

Also checked this thread to see how you are HC. Hope to hear from you today & wishing you a brand new sober start in life.

The solution is very simple, but you will not realize how simple the solution is until you're sober. So it's like a catch 22.

A very wise man by the name of Alan Watts said "If you want to take action take it immediately. Don't give your brain any time to ponder and just do it". Something along those lines to that effect. I will try find his lecture if you require.

Now Alan died from heart related problems as a result of alcohol abuse. But to my knowledge this man was happy an alcoholic and didn't regret a single part of his life. To most that may seem like an excuse to drink - that's your choice. But what I am trying to say is that the solution is to just stop. Now. Just do.

If somebody had told me this 9 months ago I'd have laughed and said "Yeah, if only it was that simple". It wasn't simple. It was painful. It caused me to be put on high dose anti depressants for months (now off them).

If you tell yourself right now "I no longer drink alcohol" and make that choice to never put a drop in your mouth, you will see that in a very short time the clouds will part and you will get your life back. With that I can promise. If you face any mental issues, or any problems as a result of not drinking seek help from medical professionals and other people on here, or AA meetings. It's all about finding other solutions to deal with the problems that cause you to drink. Fix those and you will have no desire to drink.

Sorry for the essay. I hope it helps in any way.