My parents did quite a bit of this sort of thing, and it left me with sufficient bitterness that I do not. Best of luck to both of you.

I'm settling nicely back into sobriety. When I quit the first time, I was overcoming 15 continuous years of alcoholism. By the end, I was drinking 1.75L every two days, routinely drinking in the morning, shakes any time I didn't have alcohol, crippling anxiety, suicidal thoughts, the whole works.

Luckily, after a sustained period of sobriety, I was able to bounce back from my relapse in a single day. That makes it so much easier to stay positive and dive right back into the program. I still find that meetings help me a ton. There are obviously good meetings and bad meetings, but they are a great reminder of where it ends if I pick up again. The most powerful thing for me is seeing newcomers, because seeing how broken they are is a fantastic reminder of where the first drink will take me.

I initially thought AA sayings were stupid. Chief among them, "the top of the bottle gets you drunk, not the bottom," and "the first drink gets you drunk." So true. So happy to be sober again, and feeling very, very grateful.

love this thread. if i can't make a meeting, i read some stuff here. thanks for sharing, everyone.

River,

Good to hear you got right back to it, congrats.

I think its important for us who drink to realize that its not that we are just lazy, or that we succumb to temptation of drinking easier than others, but that we feel a state of mind that those who are not prone to the disease simply don't understand.

Edit: My heart goes out to all that struggle with alcoholism.

I have come down to 0.55 liters a week. The 0.5 liters a week starts tomorrow. I may stay at that amount for maybe months for establishing the new baseline. Can't say if the tapering has been easy or hard, maybe a bit of both.

This is true. What's amazing to me is how similarly my mind works to the minds of other people I meet in recovery. I have personally experienced walking into a room thousands of miles from home, knowing nobody, and instantly finding people with whom I am more comfortable than people I've known for 20 years. That's nuts to me. And it's not just a shared experience, we just look at stuff the same way. When we tell our stories the circumstances are often as different as they can be, but if you look at the way we relate to problems, people, or ourselves, it's crazy how alike we are.

But it's definitely important not to romanticize this idea about our minds. I think I was actually aware that my mind works differently than most people's, but I also thought that my mind worked differently than ALL people's. And that's just not true, as I've experienced above. It's one of the reasons I get so much out of doing recovery outreach in the jail system. Because I go in and these guys share and we are SO much alike. I absolutely love it when they say stuff I used to (or still!) say, so as to remind me that I'm not that special. My favorite is "But I'm a smart guy!" And I'm like yeah man, me too, didn't work out too well for me, how's it going for you?

I was also under the very mistaken notion that to change or let go of the things in my nature that were destroying me would also be to lose all the things I liked about myself, life, or anything else. I thought that even if it were possible to become a person who didn't drink or do drugs the way I had been doing them that it would require distilling life to a dry, colorless, flavorless, loaf through which I could, with enough fortitude, grind through day after day until eventually the sweet release of death delivered me. I am pleased to say that removing, or at least addressing in a meaningful way, my character defects has in fact allowed the other parts of me to flourish, and that I didn't know the first ****ing thing about actually enjoying life at all.

If our problem was simply alcohol or drugs, and what happened after we took alcohol or drugs, the solution would be relatively simple: Step One - Stop! But obviously there's something going on in our heads because we go back time and time again to a "solution" that destroys us, our lives, the people around us, etc etc etc even though we are "smart guys". This imo is why step one has two parts, and that the part AFTER the dash "that our lives had become unmanageable" is easily as important as the part before.

Keep on truckin brothers.

LFS

Well said. Thank you for visiting the prisons-- let me be the first to say that I appreciated those coming from the outside when I was incarcerated.

Yeah that was a great post LFS. The last 2 paragraphs particularly hit home. I feel like I'm in this grey area where my life isn't unmanageable. I drink 3 times/week or so and get drunk maybe once a month. I could probably coast this way until the sweet release of death as they say. But my life definitely not all it could be, and alcohol is still occasionally leading to risky behavior that could have a big negative impact.

I know I made a very similar post to this several years ago itt. Ugh.

Inevitably any time I consume alcohol thoughts of suicide start cropping up so it's time for another attempt at sobriety.

For anyone unfamiliar with the case of Mark Langedijk he was a dutch alcoholic who recently was euthanized legally due to his addiction. Mark had been to treatment 21 times and went through a lengthy review process before his wish was granted.

The panel discussion features several people in long term recovery and those in the addictionology field. Grateful to be a couple of days sober and excited about the prospect of not feeling suicidal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04hlc9q

Why didn't he kill himself by drinking? Hard question, but maybe relevant.

I'm feeling more and more like getting rid of the **** for good is the right thing to do. Posting this with my 100-150 ml influence.

Bought the 0.5 liters today. Lots to down during the week. Will it be 0.45 liters next week? Heaven knows. It becomes a bit little to drink then...

Somehow I already feel a bit better, having cut the weekly consumption of whisky from 0.7 liters to 0.5. May be approaching amounts my body and mind can handle, but definitely there is still some benefits to be gained. So 0.45 next week, then 0.4 and then 0.35 liters a week (?), which is half a standard bottle. It may become my permanent weekly consumption. Would also be practical, obtaining that single 0.35 liters bottle at mondays, drinking it in 4-5 days.

Quitted? You could then say I quitted half...

You're on the slowest taper known to mankind. I think you need to decide if drinking is something you need to drop or not, and just dump it if is so. With so much premeditated precision with regard to the amounts you consume, I have to question what exactly are the "definite benefits still to be gained" from drinking and how those benefits will factor in down the road.

I'm basically a whisky connoisseur. So my end point somewhere in the distance could hopefully be me going to a restaurant and have 2x 10-20 milliliters of quality whisky on a sunday.

As it is now I'm used to get a bit drunk, and I partially feel it's nice and relaxing, whisky tasting good. The adverse effects are getting clearer and clearer though. I'm not strong enough to quit, but appear to be strong enough to taper almost unnoticeably. Sometimes you have to go for the second best. I think my risk for a relapse to bigger amounts may be smaller this way. It's kind of a long goodbye. Let's see.

Would say this is a pleasant and almost effortless way to cut down, must be good . What if my pace is the right thing to do for some? The key may partially be that my consumption amount and pattern was so well defined to start with, and continues to be so. The math helps. Kind of gives rationality a fair chance, makes planning plausible, you can see a possible end point, which is there with the force of a natural law, no BS.

I'm still tapering too, although slower than I had originally planned. I'm down to about 8-10 beers per day so I am making progress (I'm not sure what the hard alcohol equivalent is in liters), although I had more over New Year's as well as each weekend since, but I am still drinking less overall and even on the days I relapsed I still drank less than I previously would have so I am trying to see that as a positive.

After stagnating a bit over the last 1-2 weeks I'm hoping to get back to tapering over the next week, and my biggest challenge will be limiting myself and continuing to taper over the upcoming weekends, as I have been letting myself revert a bit over the weekend then just getting back to where I was by end of the week.

Nice, may you be able to continue!

I'm down to 0.45 liters of 40 percent spirits to be consumed this week, and the urge has increased, that beast! So now it's time to be sensible. Looks this awkward weekly amount will be my new baseline. Will probably taper some more when things get a bit more balanced out. 0.4 or 0.35 liters/week would be nice to achieve in the future.

At least I've got rid of anything that could be defined as close to binge drinking, feeling much better and stronger. Will not return to bigger amounts, why would I? The downsides are simply too great.

I'm sleeping better already, for example.

So, um, how many beers per day before you started tapering?

One of the AA meetings I went to for my DUI had a good quote. I wish I could remember all of it. Something like:

Anyway you get the idea. The actual quote is a lot longer and better. I googled but couldn't find it - it might be unique to that chapter.

I'm certain that's in the Big Book, or at least one of AA's opening 'bits'.

Okay yeah. I think the group I went to may have embellished it some, maybe spruced it up for modern times.

http://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf

I always though this was a good bit of writing about alcoholism:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/think...alcoholic.html

Picture a reservoir surrounded by mountains. You have been tasked with draining the massive body of water away to repopulate the area. But once the water has gone you are faced with the former town that was initially flooded and the now wrecked buildings which need to be pulled down.

I bought a miniature of 50 milliliters, making the amount of the week 0.5 liters. This is what I can do this time, gradually tapered from 0.7 liters a week to 0.5 liters. Will try to keep this weekly amount, and be reporting back in due time

Now I need to concentrate on different issues for a while...

Honestly, if you are capable of drinking that little and stopping, congratulations, that's fantastic. I couldn't stop at that amount in a night, let alone a week.

I have trained. And remember I failed to taper more this time.

The trick is not having any booze at home to drink during the weekends. I will buy a 0.5 liter bottle of whisky at monday. Wonder how I will split it up...

Honestly you get more or less drunk four-five times a week with that amount, things are relative...I may well get bored with it and hopefully taper some more...interesting to see if I'm able to.

1 month today