I wanted to get rid of the mental and emotional baggage that kept me from enjoying my drinking. But I had no tools.
I really thought I could find an easier softer way to avoid the snares that had caught others in my family, and maintain my “social” drinking.
After all, I wasn’t hiding my consumption like others I knew did. I could afford the best booze and wine. And I certainly remembered how I behaved when I drank . . . mostly.

In the words of a former First Lady:
My make-up was’t smeared, I wasn’t disheveled, I behaved politely, and I never finished off a bottle, so how could I be an alcoholic? ~ Betty Ford: First Lady, Women’s Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer by Lisa McCubbin Hil
What’s more my drinking at the end was way less than it had been when I started drinking — at age fourteen. (It took me awhile to admit how alcohol had as tight a hold on me as it did to everybody else with whom I compared myself. 🙁 )
I kept looking for one reason after another how to maintain decorum and drink. (Not to savor beverages, but let booze work its magic and tell me all the things I wish were true.)
But then came the intervention.
Oh, not by family and friends. No; my Higher Power finally answered my question,
Apparently I could indeed! LOL
Grateful I am that many women and men shared their experience, strength and hope so I finally had a choice not to take that next drink and NOT go nuts.
The only requirement for membership was the desire to stop drinking.
It would be product of false pride to claim the AA is a cure all, even for alcoholism. ~Bill W. (As Bill Sees It, page 285)
But the program can be a tool for a daily reprieve from a disease that threatens our spiritual, mental and physical being.
Howsomeever, it’s only an inert tool until we try using it.
AA does make suggestions how to get rid of baggage and damage — and my Higher Power, God in Christ, can rearrange our lives’ wreckage. Just for today, it’s worth a try.

Love in Christ,
Sober and Grateful
P.S. OtherEntries you might like if you wonder if you have a desire to stop drinking.
PPS— May be repeating myself: A Christian’s Path Through Recovery
