re: Is it possible for “alcoholics” to learn moderation?

According to Alcoholics Anonymous website ---

If you can limit yourself to 1 drink, without struggle, for 30 consecutive days, than you are probably NOT an alcoholic.

my ex step dad tried this. He became a pastor in his sobriety. Got right with the lord, started having a beer here or there again many years later. He is no longer a pastor.

Is this one beer every day for 30 days or one beer during the entire 30 days?

Theres a craving inside you when you start drinking, Its a urge to keep drinking and doesnt stop until you can function.

Like a hunger.

Yes.

Here's another thing that rings true for all of us non-alchoholics.

If someone close to us came to us and said, "I'm really worried about your drinking." Meaning, we got confronted by someone we cared about.

If that happened to most of us, we would slam on the breaks for a little while with the drinking.

This isn't the case for the alcoholic. They come back at you with all of their defensive catch phrases --

"there's nothing wrong with having a few drinks"

"I work my arse off"

"I know my limits"

Blah Blah Blah....

(no message)

It's important to understand everyone has different definitions of "alcoholic" and "moderation".

I recently decided to quit drinking (minus an occasional glass of wine or beer at dinner) and consider myself an "alcoholic" though most people from the outside looking in wouldn't. I had no alcohol related arrests or big, life-altering incidents due to drinking. I wasn't the "wasted guy" at every function. I don't get angry or cause scenes when I drink. I just found that I was using alcohol as a crutch for other personal issues and was leaning too heavily on it and noticed it was negatively affecting my life in a number of ways - physically, mentally and emotionally - I further found that I wasn't able to just sort of "dial it back" consistently. I was drinking every night but not to the point of being drunk every night, though I was getting quite drunk basically every Friday and Saturday. I had tried the whole vague "just drink in moderation" or "only on weekends" thing and without really setting hard boundaries and taking it too seriously I found that it never took and I would inevitably slide back into having at least a couple or a handful of drinks every night - which would be ramped up in times of more stress at work, with family, relationships, etc.

So, long story short, I think it is certainly possible that someone who would clinically be considered an "alcoholic" is capable of taking a step back and take a look at their life and deciding they've had enough and want to improve their life. Most importantly, everyone is different and generalizing is next to impossible. I do think that in any case the most important step for someone who is struggling is to just admit that it's a problem and that you want to change in some way. That's what I found was the most liberating and helped me the most. Even if I wasn't some slobbering drunk POS, it affected my life negatively and I wanted to change. So I have. So far so good, but I have a long ways to go.

No. It is not.

quote:

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Theres a craving inside you when you start drinking, Its a urge to keep drinking and doesnt stop until you can function. Like a hunger.

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Stronger hunger than anything I can compare it to. So no for that reason an alchoholic can never drink moderately..It's not a "choice" for them to either get hammered or buzzed. The first drink is the choice, and once you start its going to end in you being completely wasted

if you have an addiction then by definition you no, you dont have the willpower to control it. woillpower isnt something you just learn, you either have it or you dont. but that said, some people have willpower in a normal sense except for certain demons they cant control