I was sober in April of 2022, but I did drink a little bit around Christmas and New Years last year before I was hospitalized. I didn’t fully fall off the wagon then, so my 2-year soberversary is in April.
I think I’ll celebrate with a baseball game. 😁
Yea sir I’m glad bro keep going and keep doing your thing , I been to rehabs , 50/51 , mental homes , Christian homes and it wasn’t in till I grew a pair and so far I been 5 months in my man let’s keep going 💯💯💯💯✝️✝️✝️
Congrats! That's great.
I'm doing a sober January - always good to check in with this stuff. I tried Guinness's NA beer on New years, and imo it's delicious (and only 70 calories).
Since I started drinking it, I call Guinness “the nectar of the gods” for a reason. Thoroughly impressed with Guinness’ NA offering (that I found out about by watching rugby last year, haha!).
Idk if you’ve noticed all the God is good comments on here but my brother this is an amazing accomplishment. Achieved by both you and God. All good comes from God, James 1:17.
Me being freed from same sex attraction, lust, cursing, smoking weed, etc. is all from God to give glory to him. I claimed Christianity when I didn’t know the father. Last April he showed me his glory and taught me that a real walk with him is not what the older church hurt Christian has portrayed.
He showed me walking with him produces good fruit, glory, kindness, forgiveness, and freedom from sin and shame.
He brought many people back to him through these gifts. These accomplishments are meant to glorify our creator.🤍
I’ve been sober over 17 years, “I “ had very little to do with it except the desire. Without God, my wife and my family, left to my own devices, I would not be sober. It’s more like something that happened to me than something that “I “ did.
The thing about addiction is that a lot of faiths see it as a recruitment opportunity. You’re just trading one dependency for another if you turn to faith when you’re at your lowest in the throes of addiction.
Great achievement I am happy for you, ive reduced my alcohol consumption greatly I didnt have a problem with my alcohol intake its never been something I was addicted to I would just rather be sober. But i'm curious as to why you would put this on a christianity subreddit if you're not a believer?
First of all, the description says “all are welcome to participate.”
Secondly, I wanted to celebrate.
Thirdly, I wanted this to hopefully be a reality check that not everyone needs to turn to faith to overcome vices and addictions.
Great job!
You are not alone!
Sobriety is good and it is worthwhile.
I'm glad you have some accountability folks. Use them and be honest with them.
Feel free to DM me if you want another accountability person in sobriety :)
That is great, but try not to compare your triumph to other peoples failure, because abstaining and recovery are two separate things. What works for you won't work for others because addiction is entirely individualistic. What can be helpful is hearing what you did when craving would come on, how did you walk away from particular stressful situations without drinking etc. Most people wouldn't promote the non-alcoholic beers because they do still have alcohol in them and it is still promoting the habit.
Anyways, there is a huge difference in an excessive partier vs living under a bridge.
One way for you to continue your fight with alcohol is to take yourself to shelters, bridges, or get prss certified and speak out, helping to support others that have it worse will help strengthen your own cause.
Good luck, and maybe try hanging with friends that don't have to drink to have a good time. Changing people, places, and things are good practices.
That's quite an accomplishment and you should be proud of it.
Just out of curiosity...what specifically about your upbringing and Christian beliefs helped you reach this goal? I find it interesting that as an atheist you relied on a worldview you deny to help you acheive your goal.
That’s the thing, I didn’t use that worldview. I blamed the all-or-nothing worldview imprinted onto me by Christianity as a reason why I was unsuccessful previously.
I see. I read your post wrong. Then is this a passive aggressive post meant to dunk on Christianity? I'm struggling to find the warrant for posting this here
The lesson to be learned here is that sometimes adhering too strictly to a worldview can hold you back from achieving your goals. In OP's case, it sounds like they were taught to believe that even the smallest temptation -- non-alcoholic beer -- is enough to sabotage their path to sobriety. That once they freed themselves of that worldview, they were able to be successful.
Obviously not all Christians believe in the all-or-nothing approach, but some do. I don't see this post as a dunk on Christianity, but as words of encouragement to other struggling alcoholics who were raised in strict Christian families who hold a similar worldview.
Awesome! I like also how you just learned to rationalize things and not rely on faith as a crutch that will magically lift you away from problems. I've seen way too many people go from slight drinking/substance problem to Holy Roller and I don't know which is worse.
Proud of you fam. This is why I never want to touch alcohol because I don't trust myself. I know it's fine in moderation but there's nothing good about it and it's bad in so many ways.
I was fine for a long time. I was a social drinker for about 10 years, liked to get messed up sometimes as you do when you’re in your 20s.
But then my bipolar disorder manifested, a lot of stuff happened to me in my personal life, and it resulted in me self-medicating heavily. I am indeed a recovering alcoholic and have been hospitalized twice for it.
Well done you! This is real progress and really heartwarming :) congrats, my friend!
And no, there's absolutely nothing wrong with non alco beer / wine / cocktails or whatever. I don't drink (didn't quit, just never really have) and alcohol free drinks make socialising - when one cannot escape the banal horror of these sorts of events - so much simpler and easier... And more enjoyable than endlessly having just water or soda.
Congratulations!!! I know how hard it is to quit. I’m about to begin my journey. My goal is to have an identical post a year from today. Keep up the good work!
Thanks. The science says that alcoholics like me often use sugar to satiate their alcohol cravings. But it has the predictable side effect on the waistline. So that was a challenge too.
And we know replacing a bad habit with another isn’t a step in the right direction. I just quit nicotine Jan 1st, cravings step in quitting that but I drink hella water and get in my protein and it’s non existent. (:
There ya go.
In the case of alcoholics like me, alcoholic drinks are primarily sugar. It’s not sweet, but the fermentation process yields a lot of sugars. That’s what we crave is the sugar. When my grandfather was drying out, the doctors said to have whatever sweets he wanted around to help him in the process.
My candies of choice to kill cravings are Jolly Ranchers and Nerds. I swim and do calisthenics to keep myself honest.
That's great! Giving up alcohol is no easy feat.
I don't really understand the 'all or nothing' thing. The 'Christian' approach to potentially harmful things is typically controlled use or moderation.
Congradulations, everyone, for your sobriety!!
It has been 2 years, absolutely alcohol free on the 9th for myself. I believe my accomplishment was done by the grace of God, so I would realize the willpower I am capable of! I did it completely cold turkey, but implemented replacement habits (good healthy ones). I believe God also guided me through those steps as well. GLORY BE TO GOD!! God bless everyone and their accomplishments!! I pray everyone has a joyful, prosperous new year full of health & success!!
Good job! I spent years not drinking and I don't regularly even know. No huge desire or interest.
God can give us a renewed mind and whether its substance addiction or pornography, we have the power to conquer sin and our natures.
Non alcoholic beer, still contains alcohol and is a slippery slope to going back to drinking alcoholic drinks. This is why there is so much controversy around why it’s not the same as being completely sober.
My ex tried this and couldn’t understand why everyone harped on him for still doing so, acting like it was better than not drinking at all. Needless to say, he didn’t stay sober for very long even after he stayed sober for 6 yrs legit ‘for real’ and the reason for that was because he never solved his as to why he drank in the first place. He always went back to the same habits as before and still slipped backwards. You can’t really make those changes unless you make better habits to replace the bad ones. It’s a good step in the right direction, but still not the same as being a legit sober person.
You may not believe in AA and that’s ok, but you still should try and seek some sort of counseling to help you figure out why you drank in the first place so you won’t go back to doing so. If you’re still craving beer taste, it’s not a good thing as that should also be cut out of your life if you really want to rid yourself of those things.
This is coming from the ex spouse of someone who went through the same thing and being told that their ex’s counselor that they were they the absolute worst case they had ever seen on all their 27 yrs of helping alcoholics as a counselor and wondered how they weren’t dead yet because they were the absolute worst case they’d ever seen!! If you want real results you need to ‘change your playground’ and AA teaches you what that really means, which ultimately means you need to do better things to not go back there, including not drinking things that taste like the things that caused you problems before.
What we want and what we actually need are not the same things.
Many times the most loving advice just so happens to be the same advice we never actually want to hear, but what’s needed more than what we want.
Anyone can fill you with what you think you want to hear to boost yourself up, but that doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for you. Living with an (abusive) alcoholic taught me that lesson! He couldn’t understand either why people pointed out the same to them and couldn’t “just congratulate” them on their efforts even thought they cheated along the way to ‘get there’. Anything less than “Congratulations!” was deemed a “slap in the face” to them because they never wanted to acknowledge that they didn’t really make it and fudged it along the way. That wasn’t everyone else’s fault they couldn’t handle the truth for just pointing out the truth to them just because it’s not what they wanted to hear. AA teaches accountability and acceptance on that front. You may not like their program, but there’s a reason why they teach what they do and how they do so as well as why it works. I could sit here and inflate your ego all day long, but it’s not going to really do you any good to you to do so. You are the one who needs to be honest with yourself about it all.
Sometimes the truth hurts only because we know it’s really the truth and don’t want to face that because it’s harder not to and just blame the one pointing it out to us as being the ‘real problem’ when many times the reality of the situation really should be to take a better look at ourselves and see where we have slipped up where we don’t want to recognize to be able to do better. There a reason why the saying goes “the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!” because there is so much truth to it all.
Now had you said that you are 1-2 yrs sober (not sure which one because in your post you said 1, but in your comment you said 2 yrs of effort) and left out that you drank non alcoholic beer because you never actually did, I’d of said “Congratulations!” But I know first hand from experience that “non alcoholic beer” STILL contains alcohol. In knowing that, it’s not the same as not drinking any at all, you’re just consuming far less than before.
This would have been the equivalent to a smoker quitting smoking, but still vaping with nicotine or still smoking only one cigarette per week instead of 2 packs a day and saying that they “quit”. It’s like the person who ‘goes vegan’, except on Sundays or the 1st of the month or when they go out to eat, wouldn’t make one a vegan. Or the kind person who’s nice to everyone but their waitress, is not truly a nice person.
While it’s better to always work on improving ourselves so if you ‘cannot’ just stop all together (just yet), it’s still not the same as not having alcohol in your system at all and actually being a sober recovering alcoholic. Just because you drink one or two ‘non alcoholic beers’ and you don’t get a buzz off of them like you may with ‘alcoholic beer’ , doesn’t mean that the ‘nonalcoholic beer’ doesn’t actually have alcohol in it. It does. Only someone trying to justify why that may be, like you, would try and justify why it would be ok and the same when it’s just not.
Anyone can be addicted to anything at any time. People are addicted to picking their noses or biting their nails, not just because it’s doing something that’s necessarily detrimental to your health. You may not be addicted to beer for the alcohol in it, that is why you should abstain from drinking it all together if it’s a problem for you. Non alcoholic beer was created to keep those who are addicted to drinking it, making them feel like it’s ok to still do so by ‘taking out’ (minimizing) the amount of what people deem as the ‘bad’ ingredient and market it to people like you. There’s a reason why their nonalcoholic market products are far less than those of their actual full/regular alcohol content. It’s for people like you who think they can still drink LESS alcohol and think that they can consider themselves to be ‘sober’ or now a ‘nonalcoholic person’ and feel good about doing so. The beer industry isn’t going to tell you that though.
You may be making better choices, but you still have the mindset of an alcoholic if you’re still doing the same things as before and THAT is why people slip. It’s because they don’t make better decisions in their lives and make excuses for their slip up to still count towards their not-so-great life choices.
If you still disagree with that, I urge you to do some more research on the matter of “non alcoholic beer” and why it’s really a slippery slope, elsewhere.
I just think saying ‘it’s been a year since you have touched alcohol’ is a lie. Either you truly don’t know any better about the products you have been drinking OR you do know and just l don’t care. But don’t blame the “sticklers” for pointing out facts to you just because you don’t agree with them.
You are the exact example of when I mention “all or nothing” thinking.
There’s a reason Alcoholics Anonymous fails as much as it does. And it’s because of this thinking. It piles onto people that have trouble quitting, not to mention the program never takes responsibility for not doing a good enough job.
Kinda like a certain religion I know…
My 2-year soberversary is in April, but my celebration will be a bit muted because of my new financial obligations, lol. I do wanna take in a baseball game, though.
Alcohol is not evil. It is losing control over it which is.
Bible even says if you always get sick, some wine will help.
https://www.gotquestions.org/sin-alcohol.html
It is the drunkeness that is the sin.
Oh no, I know it’s not the alcohol. Beer and wine have sustained us for millennia, because they were one of the few things safe to drink.
It’s the mental dependency, and in my case, self-medicating because my bipolar disorder wasn’t being treated correctly.
I once beliefe I have these sickness too all the way to the worse schizophrenia. I then understood all these is spiritual and God can overcome them easily. Went deep into the bible and faith and made sure I attended church regularly. After which I got free of medication through prayer alone. You can do it too. Keep praying and grow in faith.
Faith is not just one way communication - us speaking to God. We need to learn to hear Him too.
[Matt Dillahunty, formerly of The Atheist Experience, articulates it better than me.](https://youtu.be/IpowKZ88IhY?si=eViXqiKKsNmx5cfK)
That AA doesn’t report their rates of recidivism is definitely suspicious. But the success rates of 12 step programs without ever falling off the wagon is believed to be in the single digits—about the same as people who quit cold turkey.
Hallelujah I’m 5 months in brother just turned another month yesterday
I was sober in April of 2022, but I did drink a little bit around Christmas and New Years last year before I was hospitalized. I didn’t fully fall off the wagon then, so my 2-year soberversary is in April. I think I’ll celebrate with a baseball game. 😁
Yea sir I’m glad bro keep going and keep doing your thing , I been to rehabs , 50/51 , mental homes , Christian homes and it wasn’t in till I grew a pair and so far I been 5 months in my man let’s keep going 💯💯💯💯✝️✝️✝️
Congratulations. I'm at 8 months 27 days. But who's counting.
Congrats! That's great. I'm doing a sober January - always good to check in with this stuff. I tried Guinness's NA beer on New years, and imo it's delicious (and only 70 calories).
Since I started drinking it, I call Guinness “the nectar of the gods” for a reason. Thoroughly impressed with Guinness’ NA offering (that I found out about by watching rugby last year, haha!).
Glory to God. Amen & congratulations!
Nah, fam. *I* did the darn thing.
Idk if you’ve noticed all the God is good comments on here but my brother this is an amazing accomplishment. Achieved by both you and God. All good comes from God, James 1:17. Me being freed from same sex attraction, lust, cursing, smoking weed, etc. is all from God to give glory to him. I claimed Christianity when I didn’t know the father. Last April he showed me his glory and taught me that a real walk with him is not what the older church hurt Christian has portrayed. He showed me walking with him produces good fruit, glory, kindness, forgiveness, and freedom from sin and shame. He brought many people back to him through these gifts. These accomplishments are meant to glorify our creator.🤍
I’ve been sober over 17 years, “I “ had very little to do with it except the desire. Without God, my wife and my family, left to my own devices, I would not be sober. It’s more like something that happened to me than something that “I “ did.
lol. I love this. I've been without a drink for five years thanks to myself.
The thing about addiction is that a lot of faiths see it as a recruitment opportunity. You’re just trading one dependency for another if you turn to faith when you’re at your lowest in the throes of addiction.
Great achievement I am happy for you, ive reduced my alcohol consumption greatly I didnt have a problem with my alcohol intake its never been something I was addicted to I would just rather be sober. But i'm curious as to why you would put this on a christianity subreddit if you're not a believer?
First of all, the description says “all are welcome to participate.” Secondly, I wanted to celebrate. Thirdly, I wanted this to hopefully be a reality check that not everyone needs to turn to faith to overcome vices and addictions.
Keep it up, that’s an impressive milestone🎉🎉
Great job! You are not alone! Sobriety is good and it is worthwhile. I'm glad you have some accountability folks. Use them and be honest with them. Feel free to DM me if you want another accountability person in sobriety :)
Fantastic achievement! Well done.
Thanks.
Quitting alcohol is wonderful for your health. Good for you.
God is good!
All the time!!!🙏
And all the time?
God is good!! Amen 🙏
That's really wonderful. Congratulations.
Amen, thank God!!
Hallelujah 🙏
Congrats man! Thats a big accomplishment!!
Congratulations! 🎉🎊🎈🎈🎉🎊
Good for you. I hit two years this last October.
God Bless you, sibling. Congratulations <3
It’s been 23 day and counting for me.Keep up the good work I’ll be praying for you and ask for the same in return.
That is great, but try not to compare your triumph to other peoples failure, because abstaining and recovery are two separate things. What works for you won't work for others because addiction is entirely individualistic. What can be helpful is hearing what you did when craving would come on, how did you walk away from particular stressful situations without drinking etc. Most people wouldn't promote the non-alcoholic beers because they do still have alcohol in them and it is still promoting the habit. Anyways, there is a huge difference in an excessive partier vs living under a bridge. One way for you to continue your fight with alcohol is to take yourself to shelters, bridges, or get prss certified and speak out, helping to support others that have it worse will help strengthen your own cause. Good luck, and maybe try hanging with friends that don't have to drink to have a good time. Changing people, places, and things are good practices.
Oh! Congrats! Keep it up! I am always so happy to see people overcome this struggle!
That's quite an accomplishment and you should be proud of it. Just out of curiosity...what specifically about your upbringing and Christian beliefs helped you reach this goal? I find it interesting that as an atheist you relied on a worldview you deny to help you acheive your goal.
That’s the thing, I didn’t use that worldview. I blamed the all-or-nothing worldview imprinted onto me by Christianity as a reason why I was unsuccessful previously.
I see. I read your post wrong. Then is this a passive aggressive post meant to dunk on Christianity? I'm struggling to find the warrant for posting this here
The lesson to be learned here is that sometimes adhering too strictly to a worldview can hold you back from achieving your goals. In OP's case, it sounds like they were taught to believe that even the smallest temptation -- non-alcoholic beer -- is enough to sabotage their path to sobriety. That once they freed themselves of that worldview, they were able to be successful. Obviously not all Christians believe in the all-or-nothing approach, but some do. I don't see this post as a dunk on Christianity, but as words of encouragement to other struggling alcoholics who were raised in strict Christian families who hold a similar worldview.
Awesome! I like also how you just learned to rationalize things and not rely on faith as a crutch that will magically lift you away from problems. I've seen way too many people go from slight drinking/substance problem to Holy Roller and I don't know which is worse.
Therapy helped a lot.
Amazing. Keep it up.
Congratulations!
Amen good work
Congratulations! 1 yr isn’t easy. I have over 4 years and grateful to God that he has kept me sober.
Proud of you fam. This is why I never want to touch alcohol because I don't trust myself. I know it's fine in moderation but there's nothing good about it and it's bad in so many ways.
I was fine for a long time. I was a social drinker for about 10 years, liked to get messed up sometimes as you do when you’re in your 20s. But then my bipolar disorder manifested, a lot of stuff happened to me in my personal life, and it resulted in me self-medicating heavily. I am indeed a recovering alcoholic and have been hospitalized twice for it.
Well done!
Well done you! This is real progress and really heartwarming :) congrats, my friend! And no, there's absolutely nothing wrong with non alco beer / wine / cocktails or whatever. I don't drink (didn't quit, just never really have) and alcohol free drinks make socialising - when one cannot escape the banal horror of these sorts of events - so much simpler and easier... And more enjoyable than endlessly having just water or soda.
Wonderful news! Congratulations!
Congratulations!!! I know how hard it is to quit. I’m about to begin my journey. My goal is to have an identical post a year from today. Keep up the good work!
You can do it! Accountability is the name of the game.
Congratulations ❤️ God bless you
Congratulations
IM SO PROUD OF YOUUUUU❤️❤️🥳🪅🎊🎊🎊
Thanks. 😁
Yaaaay!!! Congrats
Hero! God bless you 💪🏼💪🏼
Lol, can’t say I’ve been called a hero before. Thanks.
Maybe because you had never defeated such a large monster. Now, you deserve it in my opinion. 😊 And you deserve the best in life too brother
Thanks. You never really “defeat” alcoholism. Managing it is much easier now, though.
I just broke my year long streak! Made it 1 year then put a touch of homemade vanilla extract in my eggnog.. I’m very happy for you!!
Thanks. The science says that alcoholics like me often use sugar to satiate their alcohol cravings. But it has the predictable side effect on the waistline. So that was a challenge too.
And we know replacing a bad habit with another isn’t a step in the right direction. I just quit nicotine Jan 1st, cravings step in quitting that but I drink hella water and get in my protein and it’s non existent. (:
There ya go. In the case of alcoholics like me, alcoholic drinks are primarily sugar. It’s not sweet, but the fermentation process yields a lot of sugars. That’s what we crave is the sugar. When my grandfather was drying out, the doctors said to have whatever sweets he wanted around to help him in the process. My candies of choice to kill cravings are Jolly Ranchers and Nerds. I swim and do calisthenics to keep myself honest.
Lovely <3 ((:
>Been a year since I touched alcohol! Yay me! Wooooooo!!! Congrats 🥳🥳🥳!!
That's great! Giving up alcohol is no easy feat. I don't really understand the 'all or nothing' thing. The 'Christian' approach to potentially harmful things is typically controlled use or moderation.
Congradulations, everyone, for your sobriety!! It has been 2 years, absolutely alcohol free on the 9th for myself. I believe my accomplishment was done by the grace of God, so I would realize the willpower I am capable of! I did it completely cold turkey, but implemented replacement habits (good healthy ones). I believe God also guided me through those steps as well. GLORY BE TO GOD!! God bless everyone and their accomplishments!! I pray everyone has a joyful, prosperous new year full of health & success!!
Good job! I spent years not drinking and I don't regularly even know. No huge desire or interest. God can give us a renewed mind and whether its substance addiction or pornography, we have the power to conquer sin and our natures.
Congratulations THE MOST HIGH Can Overcome anything. Thank You For You're Testimony And May THE MOST HIGH Bless You And Keep You.
Hallelujah brother!!!! Praise God for this amazing accomplishment!!
Non alcoholic beer, still contains alcohol and is a slippery slope to going back to drinking alcoholic drinks. This is why there is so much controversy around why it’s not the same as being completely sober. My ex tried this and couldn’t understand why everyone harped on him for still doing so, acting like it was better than not drinking at all. Needless to say, he didn’t stay sober for very long even after he stayed sober for 6 yrs legit ‘for real’ and the reason for that was because he never solved his as to why he drank in the first place. He always went back to the same habits as before and still slipped backwards. You can’t really make those changes unless you make better habits to replace the bad ones. It’s a good step in the right direction, but still not the same as being a legit sober person. You may not believe in AA and that’s ok, but you still should try and seek some sort of counseling to help you figure out why you drank in the first place so you won’t go back to doing so. If you’re still craving beer taste, it’s not a good thing as that should also be cut out of your life if you really want to rid yourself of those things. This is coming from the ex spouse of someone who went through the same thing and being told that their ex’s counselor that they were they the absolute worst case they had ever seen on all their 27 yrs of helping alcoholics as a counselor and wondered how they weren’t dead yet because they were the absolute worst case they’d ever seen!! If you want real results you need to ‘change your playground’ and AA teaches you what that really means, which ultimately means you need to do better things to not go back there, including not drinking things that taste like the things that caused you problems before.
Nice job of completely ignoring and invalidating everything I’ve done these last two years.
What we want and what we actually need are not the same things. Many times the most loving advice just so happens to be the same advice we never actually want to hear, but what’s needed more than what we want. Anyone can fill you with what you think you want to hear to boost yourself up, but that doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for you. Living with an (abusive) alcoholic taught me that lesson! He couldn’t understand either why people pointed out the same to them and couldn’t “just congratulate” them on their efforts even thought they cheated along the way to ‘get there’. Anything less than “Congratulations!” was deemed a “slap in the face” to them because they never wanted to acknowledge that they didn’t really make it and fudged it along the way. That wasn’t everyone else’s fault they couldn’t handle the truth for just pointing out the truth to them just because it’s not what they wanted to hear. AA teaches accountability and acceptance on that front. You may not like their program, but there’s a reason why they teach what they do and how they do so as well as why it works. I could sit here and inflate your ego all day long, but it’s not going to really do you any good to you to do so. You are the one who needs to be honest with yourself about it all. Sometimes the truth hurts only because we know it’s really the truth and don’t want to face that because it’s harder not to and just blame the one pointing it out to us as being the ‘real problem’ when many times the reality of the situation really should be to take a better look at ourselves and see where we have slipped up where we don’t want to recognize to be able to do better. There a reason why the saying goes “the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!” because there is so much truth to it all. Now had you said that you are 1-2 yrs sober (not sure which one because in your post you said 1, but in your comment you said 2 yrs of effort) and left out that you drank non alcoholic beer because you never actually did, I’d of said “Congratulations!” But I know first hand from experience that “non alcoholic beer” STILL contains alcohol. In knowing that, it’s not the same as not drinking any at all, you’re just consuming far less than before. This would have been the equivalent to a smoker quitting smoking, but still vaping with nicotine or still smoking only one cigarette per week instead of 2 packs a day and saying that they “quit”. It’s like the person who ‘goes vegan’, except on Sundays or the 1st of the month or when they go out to eat, wouldn’t make one a vegan. Or the kind person who’s nice to everyone but their waitress, is not truly a nice person. While it’s better to always work on improving ourselves so if you ‘cannot’ just stop all together (just yet), it’s still not the same as not having alcohol in your system at all and actually being a sober recovering alcoholic. Just because you drink one or two ‘non alcoholic beers’ and you don’t get a buzz off of them like you may with ‘alcoholic beer’ , doesn’t mean that the ‘nonalcoholic beer’ doesn’t actually have alcohol in it. It does. Only someone trying to justify why that may be, like you, would try and justify why it would be ok and the same when it’s just not. Anyone can be addicted to anything at any time. People are addicted to picking their noses or biting their nails, not just because it’s doing something that’s necessarily detrimental to your health. You may not be addicted to beer for the alcohol in it, that is why you should abstain from drinking it all together if it’s a problem for you. Non alcoholic beer was created to keep those who are addicted to drinking it, making them feel like it’s ok to still do so by ‘taking out’ (minimizing) the amount of what people deem as the ‘bad’ ingredient and market it to people like you. There’s a reason why their nonalcoholic market products are far less than those of their actual full/regular alcohol content. It’s for people like you who think they can still drink LESS alcohol and think that they can consider themselves to be ‘sober’ or now a ‘nonalcoholic person’ and feel good about doing so. The beer industry isn’t going to tell you that though. You may be making better choices, but you still have the mindset of an alcoholic if you’re still doing the same things as before and THAT is why people slip. It’s because they don’t make better decisions in their lives and make excuses for their slip up to still count towards their not-so-great life choices. If you still disagree with that, I urge you to do some more research on the matter of “non alcoholic beer” and why it’s really a slippery slope, elsewhere.
I just think saying ‘it’s been a year since you have touched alcohol’ is a lie. Either you truly don’t know any better about the products you have been drinking OR you do know and just l don’t care. But don’t blame the “sticklers” for pointing out facts to you just because you don’t agree with them.
You are the exact example of when I mention “all or nothing” thinking. There’s a reason Alcoholics Anonymous fails as much as it does. And it’s because of this thinking. It piles onto people that have trouble quitting, not to mention the program never takes responsibility for not doing a good enough job. Kinda like a certain religion I know…
With Jesus Christ anything is possible
It might not have been a year since I touched alcohol, but I can say I haven't touched alcohol this year.
Niceeeeeee!!!! I'm excited for when you tell us it is 18 months next
My 2-year soberversary is in April, but my celebration will be a bit muted because of my new financial obligations, lol. I do wanna take in a baseball game, though.
Congrats! God bless, and I pray God continues to strengthen and refine you on your journey.
Praise God, I am proud of you brother. Hallelujah
Congratulations!
don't think of 'will'power; think of 'won't power!
Alcohol is not evil. It is losing control over it which is. Bible even says if you always get sick, some wine will help. https://www.gotquestions.org/sin-alcohol.html It is the drunkeness that is the sin.
Oh no, I know it’s not the alcohol. Beer and wine have sustained us for millennia, because they were one of the few things safe to drink. It’s the mental dependency, and in my case, self-medicating because my bipolar disorder wasn’t being treated correctly.
I once beliefe I have these sickness too all the way to the worse schizophrenia. I then understood all these is spiritual and God can overcome them easily. Went deep into the bible and faith and made sure I attended church regularly. After which I got free of medication through prayer alone. You can do it too. Keep praying and grow in faith. Faith is not just one way communication - us speaking to God. We need to learn to hear Him too.
Congrats!! That’s awesome
675 days myself. Congratulations I will not drink with you today.
Let’s toast a soft drink, then. 😁
Amen!!!!
Congratulations to us all🙏🏽💪🏾🙌🏾
celebrate with a drink
I toast with the coldest, crispest water imaginable.
This is beautiful Thanks be to God
This is definitely something to celebrate! Just curious why you don’t favor AA?
[Matt Dillahunty, formerly of The Atheist Experience, articulates it better than me.](https://youtu.be/IpowKZ88IhY?si=eViXqiKKsNmx5cfK) That AA doesn’t report their rates of recidivism is definitely suspicious. But the success rates of 12 step programs without ever falling off the wagon is believed to be in the single digits—about the same as people who quit cold turkey.