The Myth of Moderation

Note: this is a post from 2016, one week before I got sober for good.

I’ve been having an eye-opening experience with Caroline Knapp’s book, “Drinking: A Love Story.” Before I get started with this train of thought, I will just say that anyone who has or has had a bad relationship with alcohol should read this book. I find myself stopping to highlight and make notes a lot while I read. Often her words sound like conversations I’ve had in my own head.

“Me too,” I say.

Yesterday, I read her thoughts on moderation and the self-help trend during the 90’s that she dubs the “moderation movement.” She calls the idea that you can teach or train an alcoholic to moderate her drinking a contradiction in terms.

The inability to moderate is, by definition, what makes us alcoholics. Most of us have never moderated alcohol.

She writes, “The struggle to control intake — modify it, cut it back, deploy a hundred different drinking strategies in the effort — is one of the most universal hallmarks of alcoholic behavior.”

Trying (And Failing) to Moderate Alcohol

I know this behavior all too well, as did Knapp, as do probably a million folks worldwide who experience the same struggles with alcohol that we do.

I chuckled a little to myself reading the various examples she gives the reader: switching from hard liquor to beer (me, except cider), setting time limits on drinking (ex. I won’t…