LovesToTravel

It has been almost a year since I had my last drink and blackout. I don't like thinking that I can never drink again but I choose not to drink today.

It appears to me that the people around me think that I can start drinking again because my year is up. This really scares me because I might start believing them..that I am cured...blah...I don't feel any different. I know that if I take that one drink it won't be enough and I will end up on the floor.

So I now think that I should concentrate on the 12 steps.

Step 1. Yes, I admit that I was/am powerless over alcohol and yes my life was/is unmanageable.

Has taken me a year...but I admit this now. Now what?

keithj

LovesToTravel, these two statements are not compatible.

If I can choose not to drink today, then I am not powerless over alcohol.

Step 1 is all about knowing that I can not choose to not drink today.

Only when I know that, am I inevitably pushed into Step 2.

LovesToTravel

So that goes back to the question...Am I an alcoholic? Guess Not?

Perhaps I should go have a drink...or 2.

bdiddy5522

No, don't go have a couple drinks. That is not the point. I would say since you are ready to start working the steps, find an AA group and get going.

Sounds like you know you can't/shouldn't have a drink. So do whatever you need to do to step up your convictions that you and drinking do not mix.

keithj

Well, that is the suggestion in the Big Book. Go try some controlled drinking. Try it more than once.

Now, before anybody jumps my case, there are other ways to find out that don't require drinking.

Top of page 44, if when drinking, do I have little control over how much I take, OR unable to quit entirely? Then probably alcoholic.

OR, even better I think, is to examine the curious mental state that precedes the first drink. Look at the experience of Jim, Fred, and the jaywalker and see if they add up to your own experience. Have you done the hot stove experiment? More than once?

I'm not bringing this up to **** you off, LovesTotravel. I'm hoping that you will do a little self-searching so that you can know, without any reservations, that you must have this solution.

You asked where to go from here, and the advice I'm giving is to thoroughly do Step 1 before going any further.

It comes down to this idea in the ABC's on pg 60. belief that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.

Without that desperation, most people fade away when the steps get tough.

CarolD

LT....
I'm pleased you are going to do Step work....

What's next? IMO you get connected to a local AA group
Then you find a sponsor/mentor to assist you.

Well done on your sober time....

shegirl

Hi my name is stephanie and I am an alcoholic. It has become unmanageable I do not drink everyday but I do binge drink. I have tried to quit several times. The last time I drank was Sunday

shegirl

I forgot the powerless part, I am powerless against alcohol once I start drinking I cant stop

myselfsober

Loves to travel ....I can identify with you in the fact that friends think once you are away from the bottle ( or in my case keg he he ) that apparently you can just pick it up again ....oh my how crazy that notion is .....but I know what you mean as soon as I hang around with people that say things like that I question my alcoholic state ....this is why I dont hang with these people anymore.

shegirl .....I was the same no drinking everyday but almost every weekend and for me the realization of the extent of my condition was that when I tried to give up ( without help) I als failed .

keithj

Not being able to stop once you start drinking will qualify you as an alcoholic. It's the one symptom (physical allergy) that all alcoholics have, and normal drinkers don't.

But Step 1 is more than that. The powerlessness applies during those times when I'm not drinking. That's the powerlessness that keeps an alcoholic picking up that first drink time and time again, even knowing what it will lead. It's the powerlessness that lets me block out the memory of how bad it was. It's the delusion that somehow, this time will be different.

The Dr.'s Opinion and first 3 Chapters cover this ground in a lot of detail.

shegirl

Thanks I should read that. OMG! Keithj,I think the same thing. That this time i can control it, this time will be different. But I end up getting way too drunk, drunk dialing, bumming smokes off of people. About a year ago I stopped drinking daily. And during this past year I diluded myself thinking I got it under control, I just get out of hand sometimes. I know now its a cycle I have to break

AlcoholicOrNot

So....as long as I don't pick up that first drink, I'm truly NOT powerless, am I?

LovesToTravel

Seems to me that people are saying that the only true alcoholic is the one who can't stop drinking because they truly are powerless. Those of us who "play the tape though" and don't pick up that drink are not.

The Old Catch 22 eh?

keithj

I can only tell you what the BB says about this, and what my own personal experience with this is.

Chapter 2 talks at length about the real problem of the alcoholic centering in his mind. Chapter 3 is all about the experience with, having not had a drink for a while, finding some insanely, trivial reason for picking up that first drink. Time and time again, the alcoholic described in the BB, having hundreds of good reasons to not pick up that drink, picks it up any way.

"If hundreds of experiences have shown him that one drink means another debacle with all its attendant suffering and humiliation, why is it he takes that one drink? Why can't he stay on the water wagon? What has become of the common sense and will power that he still sometimes displays with respect to other matters?"-aabb1st

If I can choose to not pick up that drink, I have zero use for the AA program of recovery. I simply have to know that I'm one of those people with a faulty off switch, and that I can't safely drink at all. I decide to be abstinent, and I never drink again. Simple. I have no need for a spiritual program and no need for an entire psychic change.

The idea of powerlessness comes in because of countless observations of alcoholics making that decision, and then failing utterly. Over and over again.

Your own experience can tell you the truth about yourself. Have you decided to stop drinking, and then found some insanely, trivial excuse for picking it up again? Have you ever been going happily along, not a care in the world, not thinking about drinking, and then picked it up almost without thinking?

My Step 1 experience was knowing deep in my heart that in spite of all the good reasons to not pick up, I knew I was going to pick up any way. That is the hopeless state of mind the BB describes.

murrill

The issue for me--the really big issue, I think---was that I discovered that I am an alcoholic even between drunk spells. If alcoholism was simply about drinking too much, I would agree with you. But instead it was merely a symptom of so many other things gone wrong. I am like many (though not all) who find themselves drinking themselves to death: I was troubled even before the first drink. And oh! What a drink it was! I was in love! and then I spent the next 14 years trying to recapture that moment.
At the time I knew that I had enough, when I was convinced beyond all argument that I could not drink without serious consequences, I was powerless. I had no tools to defend against the urge--no, the need--to drink. I did not know how to live sober. But with time I acquired those tools through the 12 steps of AA. Had I not made the effort to change myself, to create an environment ripe for the spiritual shift that would occur as the result of working the steps, I would have remained powerless. today, I am about as likely to drink alcohol as I am to drink bleach. But without those changes I am reasonably certain I would have started drinking again...or at least I would have had to "white knuckle" it.
So is the person who controls elevated blood sugar with insulin still diabetic?

keithj

I'll add that the BB gives some ways of determining for yourself if you are 'one of us' as it calls it.

Try some controlled drinking.

Try leaving it alone for a year without help (I would be careful about this one, because with today's support and availability of AA and other programs, I see many people who can quit for a year or two, only to return full on when the heat is off).

And perhaps the best way, is go through that part of the BB with a recovered alcoholic who sees those words from that perspective. They can help you identify some of the delusional thinking.

The delusional thinking, which I would use to justify why I picked that first drink back up, took the form of 'I wasn't really serious', 'I changed my mind', 'I was angry/anxious/couldn't sleep/celebration/bored/I deserve a break', and so forth.

And the really scary one is, I didn't think at all. I never made the conscious decision to return to drinking. I just picked up a drink one day, not a cloud on the horizon, and found myself in pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

Read the jaywalker analogy in Chapter 3 and see if it matched your life experience. Every time I returned to drinking, the consequences got worse. And every time, I got more serious about quitting, stepped up my game, added some new counseling or treatment, and applied myself harder.

And every time I failed. When I knew the truth of that, was when I could surrender to the program and find a life beyond my expectations.

Best of luck. Find someone to sit down with you and the BB and discuss your experience with these ideas.

AlcoholicOrNot

Thanks for the excellent insight Keith. I have read the first 3 chapters. For me, only time will tell. If for some insanely, stupid reason I do pick up that first drink then I'll realize my approach to quitting needs to change.

Quite frankly, the only reason I foresee myself taking that first drink is through intense "peer" pressure from my "friends" or family. Sounds a little childish but I can see these people pushing me to the point where I do one of three things: 1. Walk away / leave the situation 2. I choke somebody out 3. I drink.

The only logical answer is #1.

BadCompany

I believe this this argument intersects at the bottom of page 25;

That is the choice as I see it.

GratefulTed

Step 1 is "we admitted that we *were* powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable".

Past tense as in when we were drinking. Once I stopped drinking a day at a time and got some recovery through AA and the 12 steps I got some sanity back in my life. God gave the power to choose not to drink.

I know that if I pick up a drink again even after being sober 17 years that I will be just as bad or worse than when I was drinking before I got sober.

That's why I choose not to drink today. Thank God for recovery.

GratefulTed

Congrats on being sober almost a year and for choosing not to drink today. The gift of choice is one of the blessings of recovery. You do not need to drink ever again. God bless...