How to Quit Drinking
A question that I have struggled with is how to quit drinking once and for all. In some ways the alcoholic inside of me doesn’t ever want to quit drinking regardless of the damage I do to myself. Even after I had stopped drinking, for a long time I fantasized about drinking again, drinking occasionally. I didn’t want to quit drinking.
Experience has taught me that this is a common thread among us alcoholics. If only I had a dollar every time I heard an addict say, “I wish I could just have one beer or a glass of wine with dinner.” It is a common lament. However, for me, I’ve never really fully identified with this form of fantasy. In my head I’ve never had the desire to have just one beer or one glass of wine. Heck, I’m an alcoholic. I HAVE wished that I could just get drunk once a week or once a month and function soberly the rest of the time.
Of course, this isn’t too different from a typical alcoholic fantasy. Heck, it may be the typical alcoholic fantasy. And it is because of this type of thinking, thinking that if I just got drunk once a week or once a month that I could functional normally the rest of the time, that requires that I do not drink alcohol anymore. For you this logic may be obvious but for me it was a long time coming.
I realized that as long as I wanted to get drunk at all I could never be free from this compulsion that is alcoholism. If I could (big if) successfully drink one night a week, how long would it be before I convinced myself to drink two nights a week. In time I would be drinking every night. Remember we alcoholics suffer from a progressive disease. Over time we always get worse, never better.
So, this formed the basis for me thinking that I needed to quit drinking. But the question still remained as to exactly how to quit drinking. And this would take some time and experimentation before I settled on an approach that worked for me.
One night I was out with friends. I had had a few too many drinks when I got in my car to head home for the night. I didn’t get very far. I got pulled over by a state trooper for a defective tail light and I suppose that in the course of talking with me this officer got the impression that I had been drinking. I never did make it home that night, instead I spent the night at the lovely county accomodations.
Because of this incident I was ordered by a judge to go to one meeting a week of alcoholics anonymous for twelve weeks. I can’t say I was pleased by this development. I never thought I was a good fit for A.A. It seemed cultish and weird and I just knew it was not for me. Never the less, with the nudge from the judge I had little choice to attend the meetings at least for a little while.
The first meeting was at a church. I was actually pretty nervous. I felt like I could use a drink. I wondered what are these alcoholics going to be like. What do they actually do at an A.A. meeting? I showed up mostly just to get my card signed. But, inside I was curious about the process for I already knew I was an alcoholic and needed to quit drinking once and for all.
After that twelve weeks of going to 12 step meetings, I congratulated myself on being finished and went back to drinking alcoholically. But the memory of what those AA’s had to say stayed with me. Nevertheless I drank for a couple of more years, my life slowly beginning to deteriorate as I missed many days of school and then work and made a drunken fool of myself countless times. It really had to get bad for me to admit I had a drinking problem.
When I realized that I needed to quit drinking I remembered my experience at those AA meetings two years before. I wondered just how do I get sober? Some people have said that in alcoholics anonymous that you often want the life that your sober alcoholics have achieved. This was true for me: The main thing I wanted was to learn how to quit drinking.
I started going to meetings but never got a sponsor. I was still, in my heart, too ashamed to ask for help even from someone who has been in my shoes. So I muddled through never really getting sober. At this point I realized that while meetings were good I might need something a little stiffer if I was really going to quit drinking. It was suggested that I go to an inpatient drug rehab. I resisted this at first, but eventually decided to go. And it made all the difference in the world.
When I got out, I continued to go to alcoholics anonymous meetings. I got an AA sponsor and began working the 12 steps. And I didn’t drink. I never really thought about it before but not drinking is not that complicated, in fact it is pretty simple. It’s just that it is not easy. Know what I mean?
I’ve been attending AA meetings for some time now and as long as I go to meetings I find myself not drinking. So what is the message in all of this, how do you quit drinking? It isn’t really that complicated so don’t complicate it. You need to go to 12 step meetings, you need to get a sponsor and you might need to go to a treatment center. It’s almost become a cliche really. But that is what works and what has worked for millions of people who are now clean and sober.
In the end that’s what kept me sober and I think that’s how to quit drinking.
