Thanks! It feels like I'm swimming against the current a lot of the time, but I'm stubborn.

It's worth a visit over there to read the comments. Epenthesis put in some good words. At least you weren't "fervently rebuffed" by the hard liners.

You'll get to the point with naltrexone, that you can decide if you want to drink at all, or not drink.

Epenthesis alludes to this in his comments. Feeling you can never ever ever ever ever do something is no way to go through life. Choosing not to do something is a completely different story

Moderating is probably not the best word, but vis-à-vis that argument against abstention, I don't know of a better term.

It is refreshing that the comment section seems less acrimonious than most on this topic. There's the usual the Real Alcoholic™ must abstain BS.

I noticed that Claudia Christian chimed in.

No sane person could learn my story and say I wasn't really addicted. I think they're just trying to defend AA by moving the goalposts around. Only AA can save the true alcoholic, and therefore anyone saved by other methods does not count regardless of other factors.

I agree. When I tried AA, my refusal to say "Magda, alcoholic" before speaking was noted as a refusal to take the first step and I was repeatedly told that it was obvious to everyone that I'm an alcoholic and I might as well admit it. (I just find it demeaning to repeatedly refer to myself as an alcoholic. Excuse me, I'm a PERSON who happens to drink too much.) Now I keep reading that TSM could only be working for me if I'm not a Real Alcoholic™. Much hair splitting over the problem drinker/alcoholic distinction, as if the labels are even helpful.

Another tactic I've seen is to claim we've just replaced an alcohol addiction with a pill addiction. To that audience, either we didn't really solve our problems or they weren't real problems to begin with--any or all of the above, just as long as they can conclude that nothing works other than their preferred brand of abstinence through cravings management.

I don't particularly mind being told I'm still an alcoholic or addicted to pills--whatever I'm called, it's just a label that doesn't reflect any kind of difficult problem I have to face. It's kind of funny; I used to say I was a "problem drinker" to acknowledge that the situation was serious without using the A-word, but now I'm an "alcoholic" who doesn't have a drinking problem.

I'm with you on that, epenthesis. Once I get free of this, the labels won't really amount to much - I'll (hopefully!) be a person for whom alcohol is not a problem, period. I just find it breathtakingly arrogant that people with no professional credentials whatsoever have appointed themselves the arbiters of what to label others.

I have a friend who hasn't had a drink in years who still constantly refers to himself as an alcoholic in casual conversation. It's very sad. He has assured me that I, too, am an alcoholic, but that our mutual friend who drank vodka straight out of the bottle all day for years and very nearly destroyed his liver was not an alcoholic because he can handle a beer now and then. So, according to that post hoc reasoning, we can't know who is and isn't a true alcoholic because some of them might start drinking responsibly someday and invalidate the "diagnoses".

It works like this:

You discover and admit you have a problem relating to alcohol.

You determine if it's in your own and everybody else's best interest to correct the problem.

Ways are discovered to accomplish that, and we all know what those ways are.

Focusing on things, you are able to change your relationship with alcohol to something acceptable. You are content in your decision and the result.

Terms like alcoholic, recovery, "I'm in recovery" abstaining, white knuckling, dry drunk, sober, booze, one day at a time, relapse, "quit", etc shouldn't be part of any of the above. None of those terms are compatible with the concept of contentedness

Those I've encountered that accept the above ideas and don't use cliche terms listed above, seem the most successful.

Whoops, forgot "Rehab"