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**Trying To Be Happy** · December 29, 2014, 09:21 AM

Hey Molly, short term answer: your honesty and frankness was EXACTLY why I asked the question, thank you for being so frank in your reply! xo

Longer term answer: I think you are right, and as I get down this road I will be able to add to this coherently. I can't believe how much I agree with you already, from this brief experience. But will be back to fill you in asap. Thank you so much, this is what I needed badly to hear. Trying not to cry in my glasses, but that is inevitable in this space I think. xo

**Trying To Be Happy** · December 29, 2014, 09:23 AM

PS: Molly's accuracy should not scare you off! Please don't let it. Open your minds and hearts, please! xo

**Byrdlady** · December 29, 2014, 09:45 AM

Since you asked!!! I would love to weigh in on this! I went back and grabbed your first post here just for some background:
05-13-2014, 09:41 AM #1 Trying To Be Happy

Join DateMay 2014Posts20Post Thanks / Like Thanks (Given)6Thanks (Received)0Likes (Given)7Likes (Received)1Dislikes (Given)0Dislikes (Received)0

Stuck

Hi everyone,

I have been reading this forum for a few years now, lurking and enjoying your successes, and reading stories and trying to convince myself I can beat this.

I drink 3 litres of wine easily a night. I am tall, overweight, have been depressed for some time (it is better but not great) and I don't know what to do. I know I need to stop drinking, I think probably abstain, at least for a long period of time, if not forever. I read all your good advice about eating well, exercising, looking after yourself, I think I may have a stomach ulcer, so should go to the doctor. I want to stop drinking and have children if I can (I am 37) and keep promising myself I will do this but not following through. I have a long term partner who drinks less that me, but we make deals with each other to stop and most of the time one of us pushes the other over the line. I think about equally, if I am honest (my inclination was to say him more than me, but really, we are both to blame). He is slim and a smoker, I am not either of those things.

I want to lose weight, sort out my health, have kids if possible, and live my life. I hate how alcohol stops me from being productive, healthy, and having fun. There are no obvious outward signs of a problem, but there are plenty of internal problems or symptoms caused by this. How do you find your motivation when there isn't an obvious rock bottom?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions you will undoubtedly have, and for all of you out there doing so well, congratulations. You have my utmost admiration
End Quote.

So, if we look at the big picture, you have been fighting this battle with AL for many years. What happens each time you allow it back in? Let me ask that again....WHAT HAPPENS EVERY TIME YOU ALLOW IT BACK IN?

I have been on MWO for over five years and I pay attention to these things, I have observed a couple of trends during my tenure here. Here is the first one:

#1 No matter how long you have been AF, if you drink again, this disease will progress to previous levels and worse.

#2 See #1.

We are alcoholics and this is just something we don't 'get over'. Your relationship with AL is as good today as it will ever be. I say 'AS GOOD' because it can sure get worse. Alcoholism is PROGRESSIVE. There is plenty of science behind this, in fact, check out TurnAgain's recent post in the tool box...AL'ism IS just like riding a bicycle, we can't unlearn it. Addiction is MORE than a behavior it is carved out in your brain like the grand canyon. If you don't believe MY words, go back and read your own. You came here in May, then again in July, then again in October...what happened every single time you started drinking again?
I'm sorry to be a hard ass on this one, but there are some truths in life and I hate to see folks make the same mistakes year after year until they look back on the last 20 years and wonder what the hell happened? I also noticed that you have tried some of the high powered meds to control your drinking (Camprel and Naltrexone). Those are some of the last big guns in the drawer. If you have a good quit going, I wouldn't give it up for all the booze in the world! It's just a freaking drink! Do you honestly think it will make your New Year celebration better? WE CAN'T DRINK NORMALLY BECAUSE WE ARE NOT NORMAL DRINKERS. It open Pandora's box and you'll be another 6 months trying to make a quit stick? It sounds as if you and your partner are enabling each other. I'd say for the sake of each other and those future children you want to have, get AL out of your life and keep it out! Don't let AL claim another precious day of your lives!

I have NEVER seen anyone successfully moderate long term. Never. NOT ONE. Ever. And I have really looked. Your plan will not work. There are NO breaks from addiction.

I have made this speech about 100 times and it seldom works. If your mind is made up to drink, you are going to drink. The decision to drink is made LONG BEFORE the drink is drunk. You hear us talk about protecting your quit as if it were a pot of gold, you will see after it is gone, just how precious it is. I have seen so many people NEVER get it back. There are 3 groups of people here: those that struggle with AL, until it finally overtakes them. Those that struggle with it, have bouts of sobriety and then cave in and struggle with it the rest of their lives....vowing off it, then going back. Then there is the group that says enough is enough. You win, I am done. They completely abstain. My observation is that this is BY FAR the happiest group of people on here. No more battles. We know when something has us beat and AL will win every time. Which group would you rather be in? The struggling or the peaceful?

So I hope I have at least made you stop and think about it. Next year this time we can be celebrating your one year and 3 month anniversary, or you will still be fighting this losing battle.

I can't imagine you will find any of us to tell you that drinking for New Year's is a good idea, if you do, I have a bridge I'd like to sell. Protect your quit as if your life depended on it....because it does.

Unfortunately, we can't have it both ways....you are either drinking, or you are sober. Your plan above is like renewing your wedding vows as you are cheating on your spouse.

AL is telling you this is a good idea. The voice you hear is ADDICTION. As alcoholics (and yes, sorry, I believe you are in the team photo) it is this voice that calls us back. If you read your post above, it screams volumes. I AM ABOUT TO FALL AND I WANT SOMEONE TO TELL ME ITS OK. Well, I'm not going to tell you it's ok....it's NOT ok. Get control of your mind and jerk yourself back to reality...what's in your glass is NOT going to make New Year's any better, it's going to derail you for X about of time. As you know, quitting gets HARDER each time (see "Kindling") not easier. Don't screw up your 40's like I did.
PS, there ARE long term rules for Alcoholics, Don't Drink, no matter what. However, that is done one day at a time. Byrdie

Edit to add:
I didn't realize you were already underway with your experiment, I just picked that up from the other thread Hanna started.
Best of luck to you and your partner, please let us know how it goes.

**mama bear** · December 29, 2014, 10:03 AM

well said everyone......

**available** · December 29, 2014, 05:30 PM

Well said Byrd and Molls. Why fight with al, give up and realise al cant be in our lives and it is so much easier to accept than fight daily.
Us alkies (im in that group pic) just cant have a few, we cant experiment as it is like playing russian roulette. Al will always win. I was a modding believer until i was up to 3 bottles a day.

But we are all different and since i have become a regular on mwo i have never seen a modding success story. I have seen people go "oh i only drank four wines tonight i wont drink tomorrow", then tomorrow "oh i was so stressed but i only had 3 wines tonight" to "oh fuck it i just got blind, i will start tomorrow". There is no internal fighting if we just dont drink. I lived that life, i choose not to any more.

Its like giving a heroin/crack addict one smoke because they want to just have one! Really??????? We are the same, we are addicts, its just that al is sold legally.

**caysea** · December 29, 2014, 09:58 PM

Hi all
A calculated break is a fancy way of renaming A Relapse. If you are going to remove al from your life because you are an alcoholic you don't get any time outs. It doesn't work that way. There are many reasons why physically and psychological we can't drink. I have seen every person on here who wanted to TEST themselves fail. If your recovery and getting sober is the most important thing in your life al has no place. There is no. I just had a few. But didn't drink like I used to. It is making getting sober something that is very hard to do even harder.

**A new page** · December 29, 2014, 11:27 PM

I have NEVER seen anyone successfully moderate long term. Never. NOT ONE. Ever. And I have really looked. Your plan will not work. There are NO breaks from addiction.

Thank you for writing that post, Byrd! It is wonderful and full of great advice.
I was a miserable failure at my one attempt at moderation after a successful quit, and every attempt to "cut back" I know that I cannot moderate as definitely as I know my own name!!! But it is good to read it and reinforce that statement over and over and over again! How true it is!

**Trying To Be Happy** · December 30, 2014, 01:29 AM

Thanks everyone. I appreciate what you are all saying, in various forms. I have to say, I have no problem with people getting tough and honest - that is what I came here for. I don't have any problem with what any of you have said. I do just want to clarify a couple of points though.

I never saw this as an attempt to moderate or an excuse to drink. Rather, I was thinking of it as an attempt to illustrate to myself/us that alcohol really did nothing for us, and was not worth it. From that point of view, it has worked. I am really over it, which is reassuring. I hated it before, and I hate it now. Byrdie - you copied my post back to me and that was useful, because in the process of having a good 3 months alcohol free, I had started to forget how bad it was. That is precisely why I thought it might help to trial it. If I really thought I was on the side of falling back into that hole, I wouldn't have risked it.

I didn't post earlier than this, but if I had I would have asked a different question: has anyone found quitting this weirdly easy? It unsettled me how straightforward it was, because I was expecting with the extent of my problem that it would be extremely difficult. I don't know whether that was the drugs, the counseling or what it is, but I have not found it hard to not drink. I don't know why, other than that my resolution to not do so has been there. Maybe you can say I have gone looking for trouble. I don't know. I do know though that we made a decision to try it out and realised very quickly that we don't want to do so again. I don't want a few blowouts a year - that was not what this was about. This was about trying to confirm why we are doing it - that we don't like what alcohol does to us. I don't anticipate doing this again.

I realise the language I used to describe this wasn't the best - I hadn't thought about it in those terms but get that a break isn't the best way to describe what a lot of people see as a battle forever. Rightly or wrongly, I have been deliberately not trying to frame it in those terms for myself, because I don't really think there is much to be gained by making alcohol the forbidden, never again thing. If you told me to do that with anything else in my life I would want it more than ever. It seems much more conducive to longer term success to think of it as not what I do right now. I don't actually have a problem with no end date - if anything I saw this as a chance to take control of what was going to happen and prolong the idea of a lengthy period of alcohol free living, if that makes sense. I was a bit sick of waiting for the inevitable and thought it was better to test it while I was in control rather than falling off under difficult circumstances that I had less hope of overcoming.

Maybe I am deluding myself, but so far, it seems to have fulfilled the intended purpose. We are resolutely back on track. Long may it continue.

I guess the final point is that yes, of course we enable each other as a couple. We have done for years. I do believe it is possible though, for people to recognise how they help/hurt each other and if they are in the same place, help each other. In the last few months, we have helped each other immeasurably. I think we can keep supporting each other to make the right choices.

Thanks again for your input, everyone.

**YouKayBee** · December 30, 2014, 12:28 PM

I can't see the point in allowing yourself to drink, the posts you made in the past surely show you everything you need to hear without risking a relapse.

I did moderate for 2 years but that was ONLY ON TSM which involves drinking on a medication. It is not an excuse to drink, it involves sticking to a protocol, and for me it slowly killed all desire for alcohol - it got me to a point where I chose to go long term AF.

Moderation without TSM generally doesn't work and most of the time is a slippery slope. It's a case of what is moderation, what I did might not have been moderating because much of the time I didn't drink, sometimes I stopped at half a glass of wine, much of the time I didn't enjoy it - it was simply a novelty until I realised it wasn't what I wanted.

What matters now is that you stick to your plan, and do not allow another 'experiment'. One suggestion I have is that you save an image in your memory, remember a time when you felt truly terrible and were at an all time low. I am sure you'll have many of those, remember where you were, how you felt, smells, sights and sounds, how your relationships with other people were, any sneaking around, that sort of thing. Then you won't need to remind yourself by physically carrying it out.

**Trying To Be Happy** · December 30, 2014, 06:14 PM

Hi YouKayBee, thanks for your suggestion. I think the idea of carrying around a memory is a good one, and perhaps not having on clear in my mind is what got me to the point of considering this in the first place. Like I said above, it has been much easier than I expected it to be. Just to be really clear - this was never an attempt at moderation. It was intended as a reminder, and from that point of view it did serve it's purpose.

**Trying To Be Happy** · December 30, 2014, 06:25 PM

Mollyka - thanks for your reply and your honesty! I think you and I have similar approaches, which of course does not make them right for everyone, but it is interesting to see someone else can see the logic. Yes, I agree, it is not the advice I would give to anyone! I think understanding yourself is key, and while there are certainly some common themes around here there are some differences too. For example, I am not going to focus on this as "going back to the beginning" - I won't count days in the same way I did before this happened, but I refuse to think of this four days as having undone all that good work. No, it is not the same as if I hadn't had alcohol over those four days - of course it isn't, but I am still on the journey, which is about teaching myself that I don't want or need it, and that I can certainly live a much better life without it.

I do take your point about quitting getting progressively harder (a very scary thought) and I will be talking to both the doctor and counsellor about this when I see them next. Thanks, and Happy New Year everyone!

**NotHappyHourHappyLife** · December 30, 2014, 09:06 PM

Calculated break = fancy name for relapse... great insight!

I've been alcohol free since February and I've been thinking about drinking again. While we haven't, my husband is all for it- he stopped drinking because of me.

Part of me says, "PROTECT YOUR QUIT!"
The other part says... well, you haven't tried the moderation route yet- so if we do it together, why not try?

I have time to decide- I don't plan on running out and picking up a 6 pack- but the thoughts are running through my mind, I must confess.

"Only on weekends".
"Only beer"
"Only 1 time a month"....

sigh, this is exhausting to consider. Hugs :heartbeat:

**A new page** · December 30, 2014, 09:42 PM

Originally posted by NotHappyHourHappyLife View Post

The other part says... well, you haven't tried the moderation route yet- so if we do it together, why not try?

I have time to decide- I don't plan on running out and picking up a 6 pack- but the thoughts are running through my mind, I must confess.

"Only on weekends".
"Only beer"
"Only 1 time a month"....

sigh, this is exhausting to consider. Hugs :heartbeat:

Wow, NotHappyHourHappyLife, that "other part" sure sounds like the world famous AV talking......

If you are seriously considering trying moderation, I would read back on this thread about moderation.....
There is a really good post by Byrdie yesterday afternoon....

I know I am a failed moderator, and will NEVER try that again!

**Trying To Be Happy** · December 30, 2014, 11:16 PM

That is really tricky NotHappyHourHappyLife. One hard part about doing that together is knowing you are able to separate out your own actions if necessary. I think it could go either way all the time with my partner and I. We were both enjoying AL free time, both stopped because it was a problem for both of us, not one of us. Now, having tried drinking for four days, we are back to not drinking and are both pretty resolved that that is how it has to be. However, if one of us didn't have a problem and the other did, that might change things. I can see one of us saying well, why can't I enjoy it when the other one is the one with the problem?

When I started this year, I did the first four weeks on my own, and my partner took his time and decided from watching me to join me. It was important for me to do it on my own and I think it was important for him too to watch me and come to the realisation it might be good for him too.

That is not to say I don't think you can work well together as well as sabotage each other - I think the symbiosis or dependency or whatever you want to call it can work both ways. It depends on which life you want more, and whether you are both on the same page. I am happy to say I have learned that we are pretty good together without alcohol. But being on the same page about it counts for everything. Good luck with whatever you decide to do xo

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