Q: Do I have to stop drinking forever?

It depends whether I can control the quantity. My non-alcoholic friends never overshoot when they drink. I used to overshoot most of the time. Towards the end, all of the time. This gave rise to significant problems. When that started happening, I had two options: cut down or cut it out.

Cutting down is not available to me as an option. Every morning I would regret how much I had drunk the night before, and I would resolve to not drink quite as much that evening. But then I would overshoot anyway.

There was no point in asking myself, 'Why?' Whether it was because I was stupid or weak-willed when it came to alcohol or whether my physical constitution was condemning me to overshoot did not matter. There is no solution to any of those. I could not make myself smarter when it came to alcohol. I could not make myself stronger willed. I could not change my constitution. I had to conclude: I overshoot when I drink because that is what I do. No one can help me drink moderately, but it turns out AA is pretty good at helping me stay away from the first drink (it has done so for 27 years).

If I had been capable of moderating on my own, I would have done so many years ago. In a healthy person, when they have a bad experience with something, they don't repeat it. Think about people eating a particular dish, getting sick, and never being able to eat that dish again. Think about someone going on a good date that takes a dark turn and then deleting the person's number from their phone.

My relationship with alcohol was messed up from the beginning: bad experiences do not consistently dissuade me from drinking and from drinking too much.

That being the case, I'm always going to be like that, so I need to stay sober altogether.

But the good news is this: being sober does not deprive me of anything. I can do anything the world has to offer, and I'm more present for it because I don't drink.

If the only way I can be comfortable in the world is to alter my perception of it chemically and / or knock myself out, I'm the one with the problem, not the world.