This is a thread for ILXors ON THE WAGON (and for the Wagon Curious)

I’m in the “I’ve had an SUD” camp, which is tbf pretty nu-skool

SMART Recovery is another AA alternative. CBT based approach.

SMART recovery is good, I got a lot out of it (including the motivation I needed to actually get something out of AA meetings, by "identifying not comparing"). They do discourage the use of labels like "alcoholic" and "addict" in their meetings.

I say "alcoholic" when I'm at AA, I say "addict" when I'm at DAA, I don't go to NA, and when I'm talking to normies I say "a sober person in long term recovery, and what that means for me is I haven't needed to drink or take drugs since (MM/DD/YYYY)"

...unless they're British normies, then I go with DD/MM/YYYY

I've had some pretty good non-drinking stints over the past few years but I'm still mostly running behind the wagon trying to keep up once in a while. One tactic that's helped me cut down when I'm out at bars is for every beer I drink I have to follow it up with a bitters and soda, which I've found to be better than NA beers and hop water for scratching that drinking itch. Some of my issue is that I will down any beverage in front of me pretty quickly, my bladder's capacity being the only thing that really slows me down. I always play it off as saying "I'm a thirsty guy" but it's probably more a compulsion issue than thirst (I'm also a very fast eater). Last night I went out to a show and felt like I was drinking a decent amount and when it came time to close my tab I was pleasantly surprised to see just 2 beers on it.