I think I’m in the same boat. My dad is an alcoholic but I only ever learned to drink partying at a school known for heavy drinking. I was never a one or two guy.
I’m in the @Yoda-Stevie camp because over the summer after a bottle of wine there would be an intense urge to get more. It wasn’t a let’s enjoy being drunk, and go to sleep sometime. Unless I had outside influence, I wasn’t stopping. Fighting personality defects doesn’t end up in blackout and vomiting in your bed.
Now the reason I drank at all is more personality. I couldn’t have fun by myself on a Saturday night. It felt lonely. I was never lonely drunk. Music sounded better, games were more fun. It just got too crazy.
Surrender to win. I wouldn’t say that I surrendered to alcohol but instead to the power of the program and fellowship and eventually to my higher power as I came to understand God. I surrendered my alcoholic mind to a power greater than me; the fellowship, my sponsor, the spiritual principles ultimately to my higher power as my alcoholic mind got overwhelmed or over powered by a more spiritual obedience.
I think my surrender is that I simply know how it ends. I’ve learned enough times. It gets harder to fool myself. I still miss drinking because I associate it with fun and socializing. I like that the barriers come down. You connect with people. But it’s so fake. The memories don’t encode emotionally. You may love someone drunk and not sober. You have temporary joy but not real satisfaction. You don’t learn, grow, develop. Needing alcohol to have fun is a personality problem I’m working on.
Fake and not even a good attempt at fake. Creating our own fake world’s with out of control ego’s which lead us in the direction of others with similar issues and a few real life serpents along the way.
I’m so glad I realised, I am free from that fake hell and I’m living in the real world and I don’t do fake anymore.
On the original subject and discussion, I guess we all have our own psychic change which puts us on the path to recovery. Whatever the cause is be it nature or nurture or a combination which I believe to be my case, we all need that psychic change to happen no matter what recovery path we follow.
I recall the words of my late mother, "They are boozing mates, they are not real friends"
A few years ago I had a two day binge with a guy in a bar, who I sort of knew because he was a regular at the hotel.
A couple of weeks later the same guy walked past me in the supermarket without acknowledging me. When I spoke to him the atmosphere is anything but comfortable, LOL.
Mother was right, They are only friends while there is beer in the glass. Lol.
I think he’s talking about recognizing that you are powerlsss over alcohol. If you “got this” then you wouldn’t be here. You are powerless and can not manage your life. You believe in a higher power and you surrender. The first 3 steps of AA. That’s what I think he means. But the encouragement helps me also.