I've recently been exploring the question of abstinence (see here and here).
A therapist recently told me a good story that adds another piece to this picture. He works with a high-functioning alcoholic who, like many alcoholics, has a high need for control. (On the addictive personality and the need for control see, for instance, this link.)
This alcoholic patient had just achieved 28 days of abstinence, without AA. Now he was trying to decide whether or not to let some drinking back into his life. He felt--he said--that his thinking was stabilized after 28 sober days, and he might now start drinking in a more controlled way.
He had been high-functioning: He was a doctor who hadn't noticeably let his drinking interrupt his work life or destabilize his marriage, and he had been drinking 2-5 drinks a night for the past 25 years. His stated reasons to stop were his health and protecting what he felt was a dwindling memory.
I like how the therapist intervened. He said this to him: You're someone who likes control. Think of abstinence this way: A decision to NOT drink is a decision you make. It will be a big decision. But the "decision" to keep drinking is really not a decision.
In other words, to abstain is a decision, and to go back to drinking is to slip. To me, that sounds like a useful reframing (though I still don't endorse abstinence for all alcoholics). We often talk about drinking in terms of indulgence: Drinkers are doing something wrong insofar as they're giving their child-selves free reign. That framing involves a sense of punishment: Keep that inner child in check! But here, the therapist had shifted the language toward a positive valuation of the adult side: He encouraged the patient to own and endorse a decision he was proud of.
I wonder if anyone here has the experience of framing abstinence as a "decision" in a similar way.
see my book here A Life of One's Own: A Guide to Better Living Through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf
