Hi Brooke,
I was listening to your prerecorded phone calls this morning which sparked me to as this question.

I’ve been here for about 6 weeks and decided I wanted to learn to control my drinking. My plan has been to become a “Normal Drinker”. This to me means to not drink during the week M-Th and then my drinking plan for the weekend 2-3 nights of whatever I wanted to drink in quantity (usually a bottle). I was a bottle a night for 7 nights prior.
My progress has been good with some mistakes which I am learning from. Only one week did I go Monday-Thursday completely with not drinking and the other weeks I ended up breaking my plan NOT to drink during the week by 1-2 nights. So basically I’ve gone from one week of total success to 5 weeks with some error during the week and keeping the drinking plan on the weekend.
I heard you tell one caller that if in the beginning if I don’t allow myself to drink all week and then the weekend hits it is like “Okay, now I can drink” Whew!
My experience so far with my trying not to drink during the week (even with errors which I am definitely learning from) seems to working. At least I think its working because I always learn from the during the week errors. Should I stick to this goal of not drinking during the week and keep it unlimited on the weekends and then at some point when no drinking during the week has been reconditioned, my new goal is going to be to possibly cut down on the weekend. I thought I would reevaluate this when I was comfortable with not experiencing urges during the week and then look at my weekend drinking.
What do you think of this plan? Again, on your call you mentioned something like if one completely tries to abstain for periods of time then we are setting ourselves up to over drink when we “have given ourselves permission”.
Is it better to experience limited alcohol during the week to create the greater urge after having a glass or two as opposed to finding less compelling urges when I say today I am not drinking?
What are your thoughts?
Thank you,
R