All I know is that when you drink alcohol like a college student on Spring Break long after college, when you can’t seem to avoid drinking in situations where a normal
person wouldn’t even consider drinking (at work, driving a car - with kids in it!), and you tell yourself you won’t drink in these situations but you still do it, YOU ARE AN ALCOHOLIC. I can only speak for myself, but after over 30 years of sobriety I know for sure that if I have one drink, it wouldn’t mean much in terms of my long term sobriety. BUT I WOULDN’T HAVE ONE DRINK. I know myself well enough to understand how alcoholism works, and that is exactly how it would play out. I know this because before I got sober t tried to stop drinking for a day, a week, a month….and now and then I was able to accomplish that. But as soon as I said, ‘See, you can do this - you can have one beer or a glass of wine with dinner - that beer or glass of wine instantly triggered a craving I was powerless to overcome, and within days I was drinking more than I had before and the problems in my life got worse. AA doesn’t teach you how to stop drinking. It helps you figure out how to not start drinking again. And it doesn’t have to be religious or spiritual - which is a good thing because my knee jerk reaction when I was first exposed to AA was that religion was a big part of it. But that was just the excuse I used to keep drinking. In reality, it is a very clever mind game that helps people deal with obsessions of all kinds.
All I know is that when you drink alcohol like a college student on Spring Break long after college, when you can’t seem to avoid drinking in situations where a normal
person wouldn’t even consider drinking (at work, driving a car - with kids in it!), and you tell yourself you won’t drink in these situations but you still do it, YOU ARE AN ALCOHOLIC. I can only speak for myself, but after over 30 years of sobriety I know for sure that if I have one drink, it wouldn’t mean much in terms of my long term sobriety. BUT I WOULDN’T HAVE ONE DRINK. I know myself well enough to understand how alcoholism works, and that is exactly how it would play out. I know this because before I got sober t tried to stop drinking for a day, a week, a month….and now and then I was able to accomplish that. But as soon as I said, ‘See, you can do this - you can have one beer or a glass of wine with dinner - that beer or glass of wine instantly triggered a craving I was powerless to overcome, and within days I was drinking more than I had before and the problems in my life got worse. AA doesn’t teach you how to stop drinking. It helps you figure out how to not start drinking again. And it doesn’t have to be religious or spiritual - which is a good thing because my knee jerk reaction when I was first exposed to AA was that religion was a big part of it. But that was just the excuse I used to keep drinking. In reality, it is a very clever mind game that helps people deal with obsessions of all kinds.