If you go back to drinking without abusing it, keeping it within the narrow realm of social drinking, then you were not an alcoholic to begin with, but probably an alcoholic dependent. If you have been to or considered AA, then you probably have some of their pamphlets describing the average drunk. Do you match?
To make it simple, a real alcoholic never recovers, never is able to actually drink again though legends and stories have gone about concerning a very, very few who have. Now, a few might be able to control their drinking with an iron will after going to AA, but, if so, they are probably less than 1/2 of 1 percent.
You do not have to follow the AA 12 step program, but you need a Higher Power and any Higher Power you choose will do. You do not have to have a sponsor, nor join any ‘group,’ nor read every page of the Big Book by Bill W, nor agree with the various opinions and methods AA has to keep sober.
But, you do need a desire to be sober and stay that way. You do need to go to some meetings and there are so many that you can find one which suits you. AA is full of people and none are perfect, and do not expect them to be all knowing and cooperative in the area of staying sober but they help each other out.
There are many nonalcoholic reasons why a person might drink far too much for too long, then, with help or by themselves, sober up and go back to social drinking. A true alcoholic cannot do that because eventually, he or she will go right back to being a sodden drunk no matter how many years they stayed sober in-between bouts. It might take them only 20 minutes from the first drink in 10 years or they might manage to control it for several months, but the inevitable will always happen and they will return to being a drunk.
KING RAT has a good post because AA will not help you until you are willing to help yourself. Nor do many folks like how AA is run. I used to take friends of mine to meetings and it bothered some of them to be in groups of men and women who were in various stages of recovery, some absolutely fanatical about AA and some, understandably, argumentatively questioning it, then those who were there by police order could be picked out by their attitude and looks. There were quibbles between ‘old timers’ who sobered up Cold Turkey, went through the sweats, the shakes, the dry heaves, the heebie jeebies and swore It Wuz The Best Way and the ‘new guys’ who sobered up in DETOX, under heavy tranquilizers, being pumped full of IV fluids containing various additives to replace what drinking had stripped from their system, sleeping through the worst 24 to 48 hours, never going through DTs (Delirium Tremors – a hellish, often hallucinatory state), and waking up feeling run down, but not like death warmed over.
Some folks, like my friends, get uncomfortable in such groups. You’ll probably even see, and smell, people in there who are not only still drinking, but drunk. AA doesn’t care if you show up drunk, because many of them made their first meetings plastered. You just have to want to get sober and stay that way.
But, the simple fact that YOU ARE NOT ALONE
in your misery and that so many people have done what you have done, gone through what you have gone through and faced the awful process of sobering up, helps tremendously. AA has helped a whole lot of people get sober and stay that way without going through the whole process of Sponsor, Group and 12 steps.
AA-er’s have seen it all and been there. They know that 90% of the recovering alcoholics from their first meeting will probably ‘slip’ and go back to drinking. Some do it within weeks, some do it after years, some do it several times, some keep on doing it, with long periods of sobriety in-between. Mostly, they go back to sobriety and AA within a short period of time. The main thing is, they have to have the desire to stop drinking.
You are not looked down on if you have slips. They understand. Many develop acquaintances there who will help one and another stay sober and there is a hotline for a drunk who is getting ready to start drinking again and help is provided if he calls.
You do not have to be a registered member to benefit from AA, for, if you really want to stop drinking, and it might take several trys, you’ll get what you need to help you along. They, being boozers and smokers, even have many smoking meetings where you may smoke as you participate without being bitched at and lectured.
From what I have learned, the only ‘drug’ harder to kick than booze is tobacco. All the rest are pretty easy in comparison and the alcohol taste can flare up at any time, no matter how long you have been sober, but you control it and it goes away. Several AA people have good naturedly (I think) griped about how after they sobered up, suddenly every place they go into it seems are stocking these new beers in flavors and brands they never even heard of and never tried and, now, they never would.
You know, they’re restricting the tobacco industry but letting the alcohol producers ‘push’ their addicting drugs with little control and alcohol kills almost as many people a smoking does.
The temptations are real darn high for recovering alcoholics because not only is booze everywhere, but you are urged to drink it because it will make you have fun, feel good, be manly, cool, sexy, and an all round better person. They came out with Lite Beer, and people guzzled it, especially women, thinking it had less calories. It doesn’t. It has less carbonation so you don’t get too full and you get to drink lots more! (Clever, isn’t it?)
Then Ice Beer. Most of them taste kind of dull, but they freeze the beer into a slush, then scoop out much of it which is mainly water. Alcohol will not freeze and chilling reduces the loss of carbonation so when they get done, you have a beer with a higher alcohol content that will get you blasted much more quickly. (Also clever.)
Drinking penalties are going up and the companies are churning out new drinks like crazy. Beer coolers now have beers in them from Microbreweries and flavored ones, ‘hard’ lemonade, ‘real hard’ cider, coolers, and at least one popular bar and grill brews their own beer on the grounds.
It gets rough for a newly recovering alcoholic because this legal ‘drug’ is not hidden, not becoming socially unacceptable, no one produces commercials telling anyone how stupid, devious, greedy and selfish the makers are or how rotten it is for you to use the product and every store allowed to carry booze in various forms has great, tasty looking displays of the stuff, begging one to just drink up!! And, tastier forms of booze keep showing up.
AA helps one avoid the temptation. Usually, though, the alcoholic has to hit bottom before he or she is finally ready to make a genuine effort to sober up.
I know. I joke about knocking back beers in my posts, but I’m a recovering alcoholic, seven years sober this time. I was 10 years sober, without AA, when I slipped and became a drunk for a year, and paid for it, and decided to sober up for good. I figured I could drink again, and started with a glass of wine after work. Within a month, it was a bottle of wine after work, then most of a gallon and then sneaking it into work in my attache case and being drunk all of the time. They say that each time you stop drinking and go back, it gets worse and they were not kidding.
I chose wine, thinking since it was not whiskey, I could handle it better. I was real damn wrong. I no longer attend AA meetings and I did not use the Big Book nor have a Sponsor nor do the 12 steps, but they helped me anyhow and if the urge to drink gets too strong, they’ll be there if I need to attend some meetings to keep from drinking again.
It gets easier the longer you are sober, now, try to take my darn smokes and I’ll have to fight you over that! 
Alcoholics are, we have learned, genetically addicted to booze and most of us have addictive personalities, so we have to be careful of drugs also. Many of us smoke, which is an alternative addiction and some will coffee by the gallon, which is another form of it. Many of us are under treatment for depression and other psychiatric disorders.
We’re not all bums either, but politicians, doctors, lawyers, bankers, psychiatrists, builders, reporters, land lords, rich, well off, average and poor. We come in all colors, all ages, both sexes and all religions.
Well, I’ve said enough. Much more and this post will have to be printed, bound and sold by the volume.