I recall going to a meeting where someone said something like, "If you are an alcoholic, once you start drinking, you get a terrible craving and can't possibly stop." I had been sober about 20 years at the time but that got me thinking about whether I really qualfied, as I certainly thought I could stop drinking if, for example, the pub was burning. I'm still sure I could have, but I would have looked for another place or gone home to my fridge which was about half full of beer, with a couple cases beside it waiting to go in. I only drank for 9 years and stopped at 28, so I perhaps never got to the stage where alcohol would take over my body and force me to drink it. I didn't think about drinking all day after I stopped, but then I guess I didn't think of it all day when I was drinking. I did want to drink for years after getting to AA, and fully expected to when the heat was off, but it stopped being an obsession after a very short time, perhaps a few weeks. One of the most useful things I learned back then was to think if through when I wanted to drink, rather than try to chase it out of my mind. What would happen if I drank? That night? The next day? Week? After a while, my head would find the thought less enticing and let go of it. I still took many years to get to the point where I could even entertain the thought of not drinking the rest of my life. At the end of some meetings, the chairman would close by saying, "You can leave this room and need never drink again." I would see that as a kind of curse and hope that didn't happen to me. I was still looking for an excuse to drink but couldn't find a good enough one. Someone said at a meeting that he wouldn't drink even if someone offered him a million dollars to do so. I thought I would, but that guy never turned up to offer me that deal. Another guy said that he wouldn't drink even if lost in the middle of a desert with a jug of wine, even if dying of thirst. I pondered that for years and finally concluded that I would, but the real question would be why I went out to the middle of a desert with a jug of wine. The only reason I could think of would be to have and excuse to drink it. I was recently listening to a tape on which the speaker said that he thought we got so wrapped up in talking about the first miracle, stopping drinking and losing the compulsion, that some may come and get the idea that is all there is. I thought AA was just about stopping drinking when I got here, but kept going to meetings after I got here, mostly because I found that I started getting nuttier and more uncomfortable if I didn't keep doing that. It took me quite a while to learn that there is a second miracle, finding sobriety quite comfortable most of the time and finding in AA everything I got from the booze and more. Stopping drinking and losing the compulsion was easy, but finding a way of life in sobriety that was so good that I could see that there would be no point in drinking took a long time and a lot of effort, as well as the grace of God. I now enjoy life, don't fear death, find living in reality comfortable and no longer find living in my own skin a problem. Drinking would just amount to making myself sick and throwing all that away, and quite possibly losing the only requirement we need to be here, a desire to stop drinking. |