Reddit mentions of Seven Weeks to Sobriety: The Proven Program to Fight Alcoholism through Nutrition

I used Rational Recovery (RR). It's not meeting focused (in fact, it discourages group AA style meetings) but there are groups and I did go to one several times.

RR uses a form of Albert Ellis' rational-emotive behavioral therapy (REBT). It does emphasize the "never drink again" philosophy, but after a few years without touching a drink, I now drink normally or less than normally. Whenever I want, which is hardly ever.

RR might be kind of outdated now, though, I'm not sure. If I were looking today I'd check out that SMART Recovery the other person linked, and definitely a therapist's or physician's (or both) help.

Oh, I used RR with something else. It's going to seem really...unscientific. I also used 7 Weeks to Sobriety, which is a plan to help support your body nutritionally while it recovers from the alcohol. It relies heavily on supplements. While the science might not be rigorous, I found that the supplementation helped greatly, and that I felt a lot better than I had on previous attempts. Lesser withdrawals, better physical state overall.

I apologize, because that's probably not a great skeptical book. I used it because it cited a lot of research (I think; it was a while ago) but I would think if it were that proven it would have taken off as a primary axis of addiction treatment, you know?

From Wikipedia -

> DT should be distinguished from alcoholic hallucinosis, the latter of which occurs in approximately 20% of hospitalized alcoholics and does not carry a significant mortality. In contrast, DT occurs in 5–10% of alcoholics...

My personal experience - My dad, about 85, drinking approx half gallon a day (about 4 times what you're drinking), stopped cold turkey in the fall, no DTs, no prescription support.

Anyway, it seems that you're not absolutely for sure in line to experience DTs.

You have free medical care - Can you start by talking to your Dr.?

From my experience (I drank, too), the willpower comes when it comes, if you keep pushing yourself from inside. I think it took me 2-3 years of pretty constant internal "I should quit, I have to quit, I don't know if I can quit, I have to try", on and on like that to finally get to the actual quitting.

I thought you mentioned therapy somewhere in here, but can't find it now - It might be that talking to someone about the "something happened" part of it might be helpful, too...

It's hard to know what to say about "I'd drink a very normal amount for my cohort despite my ability to drink more." I'm sure you know that more often than not alcoholics can't drink without relapsing. Your situation may be different, based on what you describe. It could also be, though, that your body has changed, due to these years of abuse. I would say, to begin with, you'd want to abstain completely - I would think you'd need to give both your body and your mind a good long stretch of time to re-adjust to functioning without alcohol.

Another aspect to quitting is that there are nutritional aspects that can have contributed to the original choice to deal with the "something happened" by drinking, and can also be of help is dealing with the cravings and withdrawals. This book is as good a place as any to start investigating that aspect of the situation -

Seven Weeks to Sobriety

Anyway, hope some of that helps. Good luck...