Trying to control drinking as an alcoholic; the day may never arrive.

I must say that something I found out was that by virtue of being alcoholic I could never regain control of my drinking. If you are really alcoholic you may find that is the case for you. I’m going to paste in and excerpt from the AA Big Book, all of which I have taken to heart and look to as more or less Gospel for alcoholics. Here is Alcoholics Anonymous take on an alcoholics' attempt to control drinking.

quote:
We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals—usually brief—were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.
We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing a making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn’t done so yet.
Despite all we can say, many who are real alcoholics are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic. If anyone who is showing inability to control his drinking can do the right-about-face and drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him. Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to drink like other people!

Readers, I certainly hope you may control your drinking, but if you are really alcoholic that day may never arrive.

You may not like what I’m about to say, but here it goes. If you are really alcoholic and your therapist is telling you he feels you “have it under control” he is not at all well informed about alcoholism and doing you a great disservice. Alcoholics by virtue of being alcoholic will never ever regain control of alcohol with the exception of nothing short of a major miracle. Not even AA promises control of drinking to alcoholics, only abstinence through spiritual means.