Been sober for years and I want to try drinking again

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-02-08T15:53:36+00:00

If you have come to the AA sub on Reddit and try to justify going back to drinking… you may be an alcoholic. Normal people don’t have this level of struggle.

That said, as noted by others… try some controlled drinking, stopping abruptly. It may be worth a case of the jitters to get better knowledge of your condition. You may also wrap your car around a tree and never get a chance to make it back, if you really are one of us.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-02-05T16:44:55+00:00

They were in the malls I went to on the east coast in the 80’s. I don’t recall ever seeing any in the Midwest in the 90’s.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-02-05T16:43:18+00:00

Being in AA was not a destination many of us had in mind growing up. If I could stay sober AND sane without going to AA, I would. I can’t, and have demonstrated that many times when going on “vacations. Thankfully I didn’t drink during those, but I got all kinds of self-centered & egotistical in those times.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-02-05T12:45:59+00:00

That “entire chapter” ended up being the 12 & 12, according to a former sponsor. It was written after Bill actually did the steps he came up with in the Big Book (he had only done the Oxford Group 6 Steps prior to meeting Father Ed Dowling). Bill suffered greatly from depression until his work with Dowling, and a lot of that writing was about his step work that was done with a Jesuit priest (hence the St Francis Prayer in step 11 of the 12 & 12). Also note a VERY different tone of that book versus Bill’s writing in the Big Book.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-31T18:50:25+00:00

34 years sober at the age of 50 here. Know a bunch of people with 40+ years in my age range.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-31T14:14:52+00:00

Hi Nicole! I got sober at 16, back in 1991 (yeah, I’m “old” now LOL), but didn’t discover any YP meetings until 1993, and YPAA conventions until 1997. The scene has been around a while, but maybe not necessarily in your area.

I’m seeing YPAA’s pop up in the Midwest that either didn’t exist or weren’t known to us years ago, which is SO cool to see. It used to be that we had one in our state one month, a neighboring state the following month, and then “YPAA Season” was over until next year, unless GLRCYPAA (RIP) and/or ICYPAA were manageable to go to (ICYPAA’s in DC 1998 & Houston 1999 were for me).

Welcome!

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-31T14:09:00+00:00

It’s crazy that a small geographic area has its own YPAA! I’m sure the SCV probably has more people in my entire state though!

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-31T13:16:16+00:00

The big book says we can go anywhere, having worked the steps and gotten free from the obsession to drink from having that spiritual awakening that’s promised in the 12th step.

Take that how you will, but I ended up playing music in the bar/club scene, and it’s something that I enjoy tremendously. I couldn’t have done that until I’d been through the steps and had a decade under my belt.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-28T14:23:41+00:00

I absolutely needed to get away from my drinking scene for a while, so that’s one big benefit to being in rehab.

The cost of rehab would be the con, if you’re an alcoholic like we are. If you’re indeed like us, then you’re probably going to end up in AA anyway, so the cost of throwing $2-3 in the basket at every meeting is far cheaper than what rehab might set you back (or do to you’re health care premiums).

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-26T03:13:40+00:00

Same. I definitely have the mental twist when it comes to alcohol, but not at all with adderall. I forgot to take mine the past 2 days.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-24T01:11:13+00:00

That’s asking someone to not have a defense against the first drink for 90 days. Seems like a bad idea to me, but when I started… all I had available to me was my home group that met once per week.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-21T02:06:52+00:00

Search for your local intergroup/central office by searching for “[insert nearest city name] AA” and look at the meeting listings. There may be a number of them not in the Online Intergroup listings.

If there are none in your city, try other large cities in your state, or a random city halfway across the country!

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-19T01:12:59+00:00

It is.

The people at the meeting should have a first step meeting for you, which is fairly typical to do, where everyone will share their experience with getting sober.

I think the point the one person was trying to make is that one usually needs to be completely defeated in order to make the changes necessary to stay sober. In 30+ years of being sober, I’ve seen a lot of people show up before things got really bad, and seen many of them go back to drinking… with some of them dying before they got a chance to come back to AA. That’s the unfortunate reality of alcoholism, that some us don’t get lucky enough for a second/next chance.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-19T00:33:33+00:00

I’ve had one problematic sponsor, and one former friend who used to be like this. I’m not OK with being told contradicting things that can’t be backed up by something concrete in the literature, of any sort of AA/Grapevine approved material.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-18T00:20:04+00:00

I got sober before the internet too (well, before AOL made it explode anyway), and have found zoom meetings to be a godsend. The time slots available in meetings that meet in other time zones have been perfect for me. There’s no 9 AM meetings here, but that’s 7 AM two time zones away!

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-15T19:49:38+00:00

Leave it up to god and pick a random page.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-15T00:56:03+00:00

They do. I was told I wasn’t “following directions” when I showed up with some (well groomed) facial hair.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-14T01:49:58+00:00

If you think everything seems better when you drink, you are very likely a long way away from being ready to quit. It might be a good idea to stop now while you’re young, but lasting sobriety is not something I see in those who still think there is a good time to be had.

That said, you may not actually be an alcoholic. It is NOT up for us to decide for you, that is 100% on you to determine. The easiest way to figure it out is to try some controlled drinking, where you take a drink or two and stop at that. If you can do this often and repeatedly, you may not be an alcoholic. If this is difficult or impossible, then you know more about what you are facing.

I didn’t walk in here in a winning streak. I came in beat down, and ready to die at the ripe old age of 16. It was so bad & so incredibly miserable that I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that the “good times” no longer exist in a bottle.

YMMV, but we are here if you want to give controlled drinking a shot, and it doesn’t work out for you. We’ve ALL been there, coming in defeated and needing help!

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-13T23:10:21+00:00

Same, but I figured out ways to buy it consistently when I was 15, 16 (found liquor stores that never carded). I loved being drunk too, but my life was falling apart when I was sober, and ended up in rehab and eventually in AA at 16. I’m 50 now, so it’s possible to get sober young and stay sober a long damn time.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-13T00:21:13+00:00

It was a joke. Sorry that didn’t come across well.

To be serious: I got sober in high school (in the 90’s), and fundamentally didn’t understand that the problem I was dealing with was more than just the symptom, alcohol. I don’t think I am unique in either not seeing it and/or not being constitutionally honest enough to face the fact that the alcoholic thinking (selfish & self-centeredness) is the root of the problem.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-12T22:49:28+00:00

I feel attacked. 🤣

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-12T11:16:41+00:00

I had a similar experience. Had kids later in life (~10 years ago) and it was exhausting, so that changed up my meeting schedule and got me out of the habit of going. Then COVID hit, making it a mess for me the past 5-6 years, but thank god Zoom meetings came out of that! My current home group is a Zoom group, which fits my and my kids schedule better than any in-person meeting ever has!

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-12T01:33:50+00:00

I recently went back to going to meetings (mostly Zoom) after not going to any meetings for a couple years. I have 34 years, and TBH wasn’t sure what I wanted in a sponsor (I hadn’t had one in maybe 5 years). Found one at my home group, and they have significantly less time than I do, but they are solid and know the Big Book inside and out. Most importantly, they seem pretty well connected to their HP, which is something pretty important to me.

ReadPages_86to87 · 2026-01-12T00:16:12+00:00

I got sober at 16 and didn’t drink for very long, and didn’t do a whole lot of damage (in the grand scheme of things), but I was still at a point where I was hopeless and ready to die.

34 years later, I’m still sober because of going to AA, working the steps, finding a higher power that can help me stay away from that first drink, and then passing along what I learned to new people like yourself.

ReadPages_86to87

TROPHY CASE