I am thinking of giving up drinking for a year. Does anyone want to join me?

[gracepaley]

I surely will not have enough willpower to do it alone, I can barely manage a week.
BUT - am splitting up with dh, trying to get over a totally ridiculous and destructive non affair with someone, and generally trying to become menschish, and I think being clear headed would help.
Zippi you did this didn't you. Htf did you do it? I LOVE WINE. WINE is GREAT.

Yeh you could be right Janni but the thing with a month - which I try to do every January - is that it immediately becomes a countdown to the last day - a kind of endurance test. I think with a year you could sort of just relax into not drinking.......that's my hope anyway - that you can retrain yourself to forget that you drink iyswim. And with a month you can negotiate social occasions better - ie socialise less for a month - but with a year, you would have to deal with whatever life threw at you sans booze.

LOL madamez, interesting you're getting so worked up about it. I've found the people who are vociferously against AA or feel bullied are the very people who are looking for reasons to justify their drinking. Whatever, no skin off my nose if you drink yourself into an early grave. Are these your pub drinking pals who were 'bullied' by AA?

It's is a programme of attraction, not promotion. It's a fucking difficult thing to do, the 12 step programme, it involves a lot of introspection and examining your past. To be honest there are so many people who just can't hack looking at themselves. They'd much rather hide behind a bottle and spout drunken vitriol. Again, hey ho, your choice.

AA if free by the way, you can come and go as you please. You choose to pick up the tools of recovery if and when you're ready. I have no interest in 'recruiting' a belligerent drinker who thinks they know it all. You'll find that the rest of the AA members couldn't give a toss about you either, if that's the way you want to live.

Keep enjoying that wine though

gosh kokeshi. if you think you're addressing a latent alcoholic (i don't btw) what an advert for compassion and calm you are!

The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. You don't have to say you're anything at all. It's not religious either.

Kokeshi, this AA proselytising is all well and good and I have no beef with AA at all, au contraire, but I am talking about stopping drinking as an EXPERIMENT, a POSITIVE choice, not because I am a problem drinker. It is like deciding to run a marathon or do an Open University course, something else really difficult and positive, not because you HAVE to - I really don't - but because you think it might be interesting, challenging, teach you about yourself, and be ultimately really satisfying.

Where is Zippi? She did it for a year. How, I wonder?

I was addressing madamez actually

kokeshi AA's philosophy rests on a higher power. which i happen to believe in. but i don't think making healing conditional on doing so is fair or healthy.

there is a hell of a lot that is intrinsically wrong with AA. making alcholism an 'illness' that you never recover from for a start. AA keeps people in a sick space doesn't it. the fundamental premise is: you are 'ill'. you must keep yourself away from substance xyz. only by doing so can you keep yourself safe.

empowering in respect that abstinence can change lives. deeply disempowering in that it does not address the reasons for addiction nor does it allow for healing really.

you are very nasty in the tone of your posts and hardly an advert to my mind.

Sophable, I don't waste my time on folk who're satisfied with their drinking, but it pisses me off that people perpetuate these misconceptions about AA. I'd give my time freely to anyone who asks for help though, that's the difference.

what misconceptions?

What's your evidence then that addicts can be reformed into recreational users then? Physically they will always be addicted once that line has been crossed. That is accepted as medical fact. ONce an addict, always an addict, no?

The idea of a Higher Power can be broken down into accepting that the previous way of living your life is not working and trying something else. Broadening your horizons if you like.

I certainly don't feel dis-empowered. Do you work in addictions?

Well, good luck in your experiment grace, I hope it works out for you.

Thanks. I'm all talk at the moment, not sure how I am going to do it yet. But how do you define an addict then kokeshi?

which medical facts are those then kokeshi?

sorry but that is BS.

AA is very very effective for lots of people in keeping them away from destructive addiction patterns. however the fact that it does not actually address addiction and it's roots isn't great imo.

addiction is about early attachment wounds imho. the substance being used to avoid intimacy/escape from the void at the heart of it all is neither here not there in respect of that.

yes i do work with addicts.

I am not anti AA but am very clear about it's limitations as a philosophy.

MIsconceptions? How about this from madamez.

'All cults and moneygrabbers love to tell you that you are in denial about whatever they can take your money/time/ autonomy to fix.

For the rest, some people I know have had unpleasant experiences with persistent bullying from 12-step groups, and the higher-power crap puts others right off.'

Anyway, it's all well and good talking about empowering, but if it gets you sober, it's a success right? I also work with people in treatment centres and I have to say that you can do all the empowering you want - you keep seeing the same faces going for rehab and detox over and over again and never learn any lessons, whether they find the reasons for drinking or not.

Anyway, you can't possible have any concept of how AA works if you've never been or are not a problem drinker, so this is all academic really.

kokeshi i think you're referring to the fact that there is a deal of faith involved? and madamez is right in that that is offputting to many people.

anyway. late. bed time.

THat's all well and good, but how many people in the NHS are actually offered this kind of in depth psychotherapy? Early attachment wounds perhaps but IME treatment centres don't have the time or the resources to go into this. UNless you work privately?

Well, I'll introduce you to the head of my local addiction services, you van tell him, that his knowledge and experience of alcoholics not being able to return to temperate drinking 'BS'.

How long do you get to spend with addicts? Do you monitor and support them for their whole lives? What are your relapse rates?

Kokeshi, your insistence that anyone querying AA must be an alcoholic in denial is a cult-type attitude - 'you won't accept what we are offering so you are the one with the problem'. I was also quite appalled at the experience a friend of mine had when she attended a 12-step programme meeting for people with eating disorders, where they went on and on about apologising and making amends to other people: many many eating disorders are about guilt and self-hatred (and have very little to do with harming others: fair enough that addicts sometimes have reparations to make ie they stole from family/friends or assaulted them), how is piling more guilt and self-hatred going to help people in this situation? Also the AA groups are only replacing one crutch with another, and many of them seem to refuse to accept that someone who has stopped drinking no longer needs to go to group therapy every week.

That's so out of context madamez, making amends to people is a small part of a huge process of clearing away the wreckage of the past. One only makes amends to the people who one has harmed though, so if it doesn't apply, it doesn't apply. Also its a programme of taking action, you can't sit and read it and go 'oh that won't work'. The idea is you face all these fears etc, you get rid of them and thus you no longer have to engage in whatever addiction/compulsion to suppress them.

What makes your friend go to AA in the first place? Surely they were concerned about their drinking? Personally, I would advocate any method of getting sober and maintaining sobriety. Unless you've been an addict and try to function without your previous 'crutch' you have no idea how much or little is needed for people to remain sober.

The fact is that there are many people in AA with 20, 25, 30 years of good sobriety behind them - previously hopeless cases that were 'supposed' to drink themselves to death. What's to disagree with? If you want to keep drinking that's fine, but don't dismiss something you have no direct knowledge of.

I'm off to bed, I've booked a lovely meditation day tomorrow and I can't tell you how good it feels to wake up now without energised and happy to take on the day ahead.

night night.

without a hangover obviously

Kokeshi, the friend I was specifically referring to went to Overeaters Anonymous: she did not/does not have an alcohol problem, and her eating disorder/depression issues were cured by a mixture of CBT and acupuncture. Another person I am acquainted with (won't call him a freind because he's not, he's an arse) stopped drinking via AA, is perpetually, tediously evangelical about AA yet does shitloads of other drugs and is a total PITA ie he harasses people who drink alcohol yet takes buckets of ecstasy and ketamine and claims this makes him 'better' than people who drink alcohol. Sure, AA works for some people. But it's not going to suit everyone. And not everyone who drinks alcohol, enjoys doing so and has no reason to stop doing so is an alcoholic in denial.

Back to the original post ... I've just had a week off, just to see what it would be like, first time since I can remember

I know of OA. The difference being, I feel, it's much more difficult to determine abstinence with compulsive eating than it is with drinking. You either drink r you do not. With food, 'recovery' has to be subjective and that's when the old habits start creeping back in. I'd advocate CBT too, they're not mutually exclusive.

I didn't actually say that everyone who drinks and doesn't attend AA is an alcoholic in denial, that would be absurd. People who have attended AA and are so evangelical about how it didn't work (usually with a glass in hand), obviously are in some sort of denial. It's a recognised part of an addiction, that's why people drink themselves to death and anyone with any experience of addiction will say that.

Your example of the AA member who is still taking drugs isn't representative of the fellowship at all. He's just cheating himself to be honest, quite sad actually. It's not uncommon though for people to be dual-addicted, I've seen that quite often too, especially in younger members. There are 800 meetings every week in the city where I live so some people must get something out of it.

In terms of maintaining sobriety, it provides so much more than NHS addiction serives ever could. They're usually short term detox and 4 week rehab treatments and it's takes a hell of a lot longer to change the habits of a life-time.

The drug-taking AAer is obviously a perfect example of denial of addiction in action. Maybe someone should tell him about NA .

Okay - still thinking about this, I'm really, really tempted to join you Grace - but might need a couple of days to get myself geared up to start! I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head when you compare the decision to running a marathon or doing an OU course. Sometimes you just need to go for the big one!!!

I don't think committing to not drinking for a year would work for me. I'd definately fall at an early hurdle and end up in old cycles of shame/guilt/drink.

Would like to take it one day at a time though.

I feel as though I am going through a healing process after serious PND when ds born almost 3 years ago. It was a very frightening and traumatic time for me. As a result I started going to counselling a year ago and it has really helped me address some of those 'attachment wounds' that Sophable spoke of. I realise I am lucky to be able to afford this kind of support. As a result of counselling I have stopped smoking (fags and dope) and feel more positive about myself and my life than I have for years.

As a kind of 'reward' for not smoking I have stopped challenging my drinking and am now having at least half a bottle of wine every night. I am questioning it. Starting to feel defensive (DH doesn't really drink).

I kind of know where people are coming from re AA. I am going to give it a whirl and use my counsellor as support. There is something about admitting to/being labelled as an alcoholic that puts me off accepting that support. And surely that isn't a good thing. We should be able to access support in a way that isn't shaming or uncomfortable for us.

There is a lot of alcohol in my house and friends around this weekend. I guess I;m not going to commit to anything until I've cooked the enormous Sunday roast tomorrow (wine and cooking are a great match for me). Will keep checking into thread and use it as a motivation to stop soon.