I don't find moderation possible either, and god knows I tried. Well, I say that, but with hindsight I'm not so sure. I wanted to be free of the health issues I knew I was storing up, not to have The Fear, and not to make an idiot of myself, but I also wanted to knock back a bottle or two of wine most nights. The Holy Grail was a way to make this possible, which of course it isn't. I tried various regimes, each one barmier than the last, including:
*No wine if you had some the night before. Except if you have guests, as hospitality is important, and it would be rude to let them drink alone.
*Only with food. But snacks count as food, so wine and crisps with a side order of chocolate is just fine.
*Pour away the first glass (the daftest one of the lot). Obviously not from the second bottle though - have you seen the price of decent wine?
*Only drinking in company. But someone on the end of the phone is company, right? As are virtual friends online.
Telling myself that I had a system excused so much. Like going to Weight Watchers but eating pies and chocolate cake between meetings, it meant I was trying, and it wasn't my fault if the regimes didn't work, was it? I had years of that nonsense, recording intake like Bridget Jones, fiddling with figures so that my average number of units dropped (eg averaging over different numbers of days), fooling myself all the time.
I didn't post on here when I stopped, but I found my tribe in Bright Eye (it folded, so no point in looking for it now). They had an odd system where only Admin could start threads, so some had thousands of pages and were very clunky, but what I liked was that there was a progression through the ranks for abstainers. Day 1 had its own thread, as did 30 days, 90 days, 6 months etc etc, so you more or less stayed with the same people as you all 'moved up' to the next one, and you got to know them, as we do on here. It was an incentive not to drink. Except of course that nothing could be proved, and sometimes it was blindingly obvious that someone was plastered but didn't want to admit it, and the ethos was one of 'as long as you're trying it's ok'. Which is ok in a way - I can't see the point in booting someone back to first base after a year because they had a few drinks one night - but when people did it regularly it took away the incentive to abstain so you could stay with your threadmates.
The thread for the first month and some of the moderation threads went round in circles, as people fell off the wagon and started again every couple of days, with lots of hugs and 'we get it's. I'm sure that some people did it for the attention if they were feeling low, as there's not as much to say to someone who's clinging on after three weeks or so, but they got reassurance when they confessed to a relapse. It just seemed counter-productive to me. Seriously, people were on there for years, every time saying that this was it, but then giving up every week. It set the tone for the threads, and I think they did more harm than good, as people found drinking buddies as opposed to sober support. If anyone said so, however, they were pounced on and told they were draconian, and didn't they know how hard it is to get through the first 3 months? Er yes - but it's even harder when people keep telling you that a bottle of wine every couple of nights is ok if you just get back on the horse the next day and start again.
It's hard to get the balance right, isn't it? Sometimes people have to try to moderate to find out that they can't, but if they've had months or years of sobriety they are not in the same boat as someone who is genuinely starting out. Also, we could all tell lies - we take what others say on trust, which is all we can do. Sorry, I'm waffling😂. I'll shut up now.