Beyond Rehab

An interesting thing happened just hours after I posted my last blog on moderate drinking. I was at a gathering of old friends I was meeting for the first time—friends of friends—so the spirit was celebratory. There was plenty of alcohol and the person going to the store was taking orders for more. “I’ll just do shots so get a bottle of….” “I like Heinekin but Amstel is good too….”

I was listening and thinking, “I wish I could say SKYY Vodka. I loved SKYY Vodka….”

And then began the hour or more of intense and aggravating self-talk so that I would not decide to drink. Not that I would have done it right there, but I could have made the decision then to drink as soon as I got home.

I thought it was interesting that after going on in my last post about the amount of work moderate drinking would be for me, I was confronted with at least an equal amount of work in order that I not drink at all.

The end of the story—and the end of my work that night—was that the husband confided in me that his wife, the hostess of the party, was a full-blown alcoholic. In fact, her last husband had died from an Alcohol related illness.

Wow. So I was having a reasonable reaction given that I was in the company of my old behavior—the excitement of drinking together was the sweet side and the husband dying of an alcoholic related disease was the poisonous side. When I connected all that, my work was done. I easily enjoyed the rest of the party.

I believe that certain people who have struggled with substance abuse can have a glass of wine without a problem. But I’m probably not talking about you.

I don’t think very many people who have struggled with substance abuse have reached the level of understanding and maturity that is required to drink moderately without a problem. I’m going to brag here and say I believe I have reached that level. I say that without having actually put myself to the test, so I can’t really know for sure. But I am not convinced for myself that “One drink is too many and 1000 is never enough,” as A.A. puts it.

I know that if I reintroduce alcohol into my life and try to maintain a light drinking habit, it will be a LOT more work for me than I care to take on. The daily conversations I would need to have with myself in order to continue that moderate drinking behavior are much more than I want to tackle.

So even though I think moderate drinking is possible for a select few, I’m not interested in the challenge. But before you rush to the challenge yourself, I suggest you read this article.

The article covers the case of Audrey Kishline, the founder of Moderation Management (MM). Reading that article (and other articles on the author’s website) illuminated even more my understanding that even though successful moderate drinking is possible for me, it’s just not worth the effort. I think it’s possible to become a moderate drinker after struggling with addictions, but I do not think that most people in recovery who desire to do so are willing to do what it takes to accomplish that.