Nope. Pure and simple. And there is freedom there.
Once I stopped doing all that exhausting mental math of:
Only beer
Only clear liquors
Only on the weekends, except today was a really hard Tuesday so I’ll only have two…
Okay since I had two yesterday I can have two again today…
Now I will drink everything in the house.
Once you take the desire to moderate out of the equation it becomes really simple. Don’t take that first drink and you can’t end up drunk.
One drink equals all the drinks.
Don’t have one.
I can only go off my own experience, but I’m similar to you in a lot of ways you’ve described, weekend drinker, never affected my week, like to party but a tenancy to drink too much and blackout and be a dick to people. I’ve tried to moderate for years and yes sometimes I can do it, but inevitably at some point I fail and that happens more often than not. Having repeated this cycle and attempts to moderate for so long I now accept I cannot drink. I’m never going to have 100% control over my ability to moderate and it only takes one time to fuck up and destroy relationships or worse. So based on this I would say no, if you’ve haven’t been able to consistently moderate in the past you won’t suddenly gain the ability to do that.
It’s true. Trying to figure out how many you can have, how you will have them, what you will try to do to prevent X from happening is very stressful and ultimately doesn’t work. Once you accept it, it is much easier to just say I don’t drink & not do it. And then you are in control. The moment you say anything else you’ve lost control. That’s what I think anyway and am trying to live by, having spent years doing the opposite much to my detriment.
Me too! Accepting that those days are gone is a hard pill to swallow. It’s impossible to turn a pickle back to a cucumber. But I can promise you that sobriety is a much better way to live.
Just my opinion … I am an alcoholic. I cannot have just one drink. I can not drink at just one event. Even when I was drinking alcohol, my life was not worth living and why I tried although failed many times to end it all. If you can control your drinking and moderate my hat is off to you! For me never would be possible.
I always say that one drink is too much, and 1000 would never be enough.
Not worth the impact it’s had on my mental and physical health, my relationships, my job and my life.
Everyone is different, but I’ve never met someone who could moderate their drinking.
Alcohol moderation didn’t work for me. I tried many times. It only took one bad night. Years of bullshit. Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. I wish you the best with your journey.
For me, moderation is not an option.
Each attempt to moderate made me abuse alcohol even more. Like I had to catch up on lost alcohol.
Zero alcohol is the way for me. Almost 200 days sober. And I’m not a mean shithead anymore.
Your story sounds similar to mine in that I never really developed a issue with drinking until after my mom passed. Trust me, I’ve tried regulating it since and thus far I have failed every time.
There’s a certain level of denial we live in with this and I think it’s just the addict brain doing anything it can to get you to take that drink.
Thanks so much to everyone Who has answered my question. The answer IS pretty clear i just need to come around the idea.
It IS the first time i have tried stopped or control It( i ma 35yo).
Being a spaniard It is common to have people around drinking at any time, most if the time around food. Having so many people Who can have one or two glasses of wine and then swich to non alcoholic beverages really frustrated me…why cant i do the same? Why do i end Up embarrasing myself?
Anyway, thabks so much again
Because somewhere we crossed a line and our brain has changed by that?
I like the phrase about the cucumber and the pickle for that:
You can change a cucumber into a pickle, but you can’t change that pickle into a cucumber again.
I was ones that cucumber, now I am a pickle and live sober because of it.
Hi @Pantx89 welcome to the forum .You don’t have to be a daily drinker to be an alcoholic .alcoholics take the first drink and it sets off a phenomenon of craving in the brain (a chemical imbalance) that makes them consume more and more of it then comes the mental obsession and they no longer have the ability to stop, Then they reach blackout when they no longer have the ability to process the short term memory into the long term memory bank hence the word blackout . If a person needs to control something then they have a problem with it .people who don’t can take or leave it and will not excessively consume. hope this helps ,your in the right place .Search the tools for recovery threads on here and we will be here to support you. post when you have cravings and before you pick up the first drink if you don’t pick up the first you can’t get drunk .sending love and strength to you today
The only thing I can think of is you have the capability to turn the faucet all the way on. Once you start to allow yourself to have a few, maybe one more won’t hurt. Then you get closer and closer and are back at square one. I assume your partner may be concerned. I’m an alcoholic and the thought of it makes me want think “oh I’m smart enough to control. I’ve quit before” and then the harmless drinking becomes hurtful drinking.
Hi,
I found it impossible to do this,i tried many times to take leaf out of my Dads book and only drink at the weekend and just have a few pints and go home but it didnt work,once i got the taste that was it, i didnt know when to stop,so i decided it had to be nothing in the end.
Alcohol slows your reaction, your reasoning skills and thinking. Alcohol slows your brain in general.
I don’t think it matters how much work you have put into a plan of how much you are “allowed” to have in a session and when and how… As soon as you have slow-brain that whole plan is just going to fail. It’s happened a million times before and it’ll happen a million times again if you let it
