Long post alert - takeaway is 'we are all different', so you don't need to read the rest, but I found total abstinence so much easier than moderation. Over the years I tried so many 'regimes' - not drinking two nights in a row, only drinking when there's a 'reason' (yeah, a reason like fancying a drink), some daft thing about tipping a glass out of each bottle down the sink (I know🙄), pre-selecting three days from every week and only drinking on those days. Obviously none of them worked. In fact, trying to stick to pointless rules just made things worse, as they involved thinking about it all, or writing things down.
Personally, I hate rules and structure😂. I'm very definitely likely to rebel against anything that seems like a pointless restriction of my freedom to do harmful things. It's like I'm stuck at the 14 year old stage. There were so many rules growing up, with consequences for breaking them that they make me anxious. For me, it was so much simpler just to accept that I don't drink (made easier by believing that I would die if I did - that's a serious motivator!) and that was that. No 'can I drink on Tuesday this week?' 'Does continuing drinking after midnight count as drinking on both days or just the one when I poured the first glass?' 'As I've poured a glass out of the first bottle, is that it, or do I also have to pour one out of the second? Or the third?' All of that obsessing meant thinking about alcohol, as was reading 'quit lit', which I also hated. AA would definitely not have worked for me for the same reason. Going somewhere specifically to talk about alcohol when I was trying hard not to think about alcohol just seems counterproductive to me.
But that's the important thing - we are all different. AA clearly does work for many people. Quit lit sells in huge quantities, and people obviously get a lot out of it. Rules keep some people sane. Mostly, I just crack on and leave others to do their thing unless it's harming me. I'm not talking about general tolerance - I'm no Dalai Lama and can be as crabby as the next old bat - but when it comes to what works surrounding sobriety, I don't think there are lines in the sand. Some people disapprove of AF drinks, but they made (and still make) life easier for me. It doesn't bother me if people drink around me, or talk about doing so. I used to be vegetarian, and it didn't get upset when people talked about the delicious steak they had the night before. I don't even care when people bore on about football - maybe I am the Dalai Lama?🤔. To me it's the same principle.
The only thing I can remember that I did find harmful was on another board that's closed now. The rule was 'no judgement', which is great, but it was translated to 'pretend that it's ok to lapse so long as you admit it'. The structure was that there were forums for each stage of the journey, and you moved up when you hit a milestone and posted in the relevant bit as well as the 'whole board' forums. People used to be stuck on the 'early days' section for years. They'd come on and talk about how they'd been unable to resist a delicious chilled glass of white then drank four bottles, and everyone would empathise and welcome them back with hugz and sympathy every time. In itself, that's fine (most of us try and fail several times before it finally sticks - I certainly did), but it reached the point where in order to feel included you had to have a few 'lapses' behind you, and it wasn't really a 'quit' forum at all - it was a 'boozers who wish they didn't drink' one, and that didn't work for me. I had to stay away until I passed that stage and joined in the next one up, where the more serious attempts were being made. People still lapsed, but it felt more like real lapses, not attention-seeking. Saying 'oh never mind, just this once won't do any harm' a hundred times to people with medical issues was irresponsible. It wasn't 'just once' - it was every Saturday night so it would do harm, and others who were really struggling to stay sober had to read it. Anyway, maybe that approach helped others, but it didn't work for me.
*All of this is a long-winded way of saying that we all have to find our own approach and stick to it.