(October 23, 2014 at 1:28 pm)Dorian Gray Wrote: Since I found nothing to really work for my sobriety, accept myself, I am actually turning back to an extremely unpopular point of view that has been discarded long ago by the addiction culture: willpower and self-control. It has become simply accepted that willpower does nothing and has no effect on any addictive behavior, when in fact self-control is a major ingredient in most successful endeavors. Why not for addiction recovery? Advancements in neuroscience are just now beginning to make psychologists rethink treatment methods for many things. Most addicts need to realize that there is nothing unusual about ending up where you are: jobless, broke, jail, prison, homeless, or whatever. The particular brew of brain chemicals and combination of life circumstances has put you where you are with no degree of surprise. And it's no surprise that willpower and self control failed people. Somewhere somehow someone is working on mindfullness methods or a pill that will increase self-control and willpower, so we can all take our lives back and not be slaves to our own biochemicals, free from meetings and churches and grasping at straw methods to overcome the seemingly impossible. Ha! Maybe I'm delusional....Er, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that most everyone who makes it to AA, rehab or therapy tried willpower and self control multiple times without success. That's why they end up in those places.
If you can control your drinking through willpower and self control, then you're not an alcoholic. My brother is a heavy drinker, but he can stop whenever he needs to. He's not an alcoholic.
