AA is a program of abstinence.

The alcholic cannot drink safely, as we cannot guarantee how much we will end up drinking, for how long, what we will do when drunk, or where we will end up. Our power to choose our path while intoxicated vanishes, and the alcohol makes the choices, and we suffer for it.

Not all of us drank every day. It is not about the frequency of it. It is about what happens to us when we drink alcohol.

So we have found a way to be a lot happier without alcohol in any form. We have found new meaning in life, learned how to truly relax and have fun, how to love ourselves, and attract the kind of people who are healthy into our lives. We even have much better sex, and more meaningful sexual relationships once we start to work the program and get some good sobriety into our lives.

Most alcoholics fear anything that requires complete abstinence from alcohol, because we cannot imagine life without it, on some occasion. But non-alcoholics do not think like that. Non-alcoholics do not try to "control" their drinking, because they don't THINK about alcohol in that way. It does not screw their lives up, and they are still in control, so they have no reason to think obsessively about drinking or not drinking, or managing or planning their drinking.

Stick around, and if you decide at some point that you are an alcoholic, you can leanr form our experience how it works, and how we found freedom.

I was what you might call a "binge drinker" from college up until the last 3 years.  I always looked forward to planned periods when I could get wasted, but I stayed sober in between.  What crept up on me was starting to drink 1 or 2 times during the week.  Then a pattern of every other day occurred for a good while.  For a month or so before hitting bottom, I had started drinking every day.  There were a few times when I did have just a few drinks, but usually I felt cheated or ripped off by the experience.  I was mad that it didn't help me enjoy whatever experience that I was having.  A couple glasses always left me feeling like "WTF? I hate this.  Why do people only drink a couple glasses?"  I would get an instant hangover within an hour instead of the massive one the next day which I was used to.  After stepping back and realizing I have NEVER EVER been able to drink normally, it has always been getting wasted pretty much, even when it wasn't every day, I pretty much know that 1 drink will lead me to a very bad place. 

P.S.-Old timers, I know my posts are long and a bit convoluted.  It's helping to sort out my own thinking.  Codependent2, I hope this helps you, even though it's coming from another person who is also still figuring things out.

I've tried many times, and while it would work once in a while, it absolutely wasn't worth it for those nightmare-ish times it didn't work.

Same as the others, for me a few drinks is impossible.

I was also a binge drinker, and if I had even one or two, it would always become three or four the next time I drank, and within a very short time, I'd be back to the way I always drank.

As they say, "it is the first drink which does the damage"......I am a bit slow, so I used to always question this statement and think to myself, "no, it's about the fourth or fifth which does the damage", but I now see the truth of the statement, because every time I have that first drink, I am inexorably heading toward drinking too many!

For me, I am addicted to alcohol and my brain will try to find a way to have that first drink, and once I have had the first, I lose will power, and I decide to drink too many, "just this once".

Of course all sorts of people try to suggest that it is okay for me to drink.....some of them are normal drinkers, who only drink a little, and can't understand why I am not like them, and some of them don't like me not drinking, because it forces them to look at their own drinking excesses as something which they may need to change, and if they have a problem with alcohol, then their brain also will find a way to rationalise that their drinking is okay.........it wants more alcohol.

I have had a lot of friends and associates who I have less contact with, due to there being a difference between us now, in that I try not to drink, and if I hang around drinkers, then I will eventually drink, and also because it is not fun being around people who are drinking, for me anyway. I see their behaviour, which is identical to mine when I drank, as quite sad and boring, and contrary to my belief that when drinking, I 'communicated better', I see what goes on as simply each drinker retreating into their own shell of numbness, and I know that for me, in the morning, I remembered little of the supposedly wonderful and world saving conversations, all of which amounted to nothing.

For me, I cannot drink at all, and it is only through attendance at AA, association with other alcoholics, and this forum is one way I can do that, and constant reminders of who and what I am, and also that I am a fantastic person even though I am alcoholic, as are all of us, that I am able to not drink, one day at a time.

It is only day three for me, so it is early, but I know that with the tools AA has given me, I can do this, though, of course it is just for today that I think of right now.

Good luck to you Codep2, be kind to yourself, and do what is right for you, not what others want you to do!

Tex, while not your original post, I liked what you had to say.  It takes courage to come back. I am impressed by your focus and self-acceptance at day 3, even though I know you had a lot of AA knowledge from before (in the 14 months).  Keep it up!