Once an Alcoholic, Always an Alcoholic: Really?

By Matt Brindley. For UK adults. Reviewed November 2026.

The first thing anyone said to me in an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting was...

"Quick tip mate: never trust your instincts again, and admit that you'll always be powerless."

Of everything he could have told me, those were the two worst things.

Everything I'd ever got right in my life, I'd got right by trusting my gut, and taking ownership of it.

There and then, before I'd even sat down, I knew it was the wrong room.

In short

• It's a belief, not a diagnosis. Mantras like "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic", "one drink is too many, 1,000 is never enough" and "one day at a time" come from the 12-step world... They help people condition themselves and lean into the ideology.

• Doctors today talk differently. They talk about harmful drinking, alcohol dependence or alcohol use disorder, on a spectrum from mild to severe.

• We do recover, and not just by stopping completely. In a large US government survey that asked 43,000 adults about their drinking, about a third of people who'd been dependent more than a year earlier had fully recovered. Roughly half didn't drink at all; the other half drank at low-risk levels.

• The label can keep people stuck. A UK study found the all-or-nothing "alcoholic" idea makes heavy drinkers less likely to face the problem, because the label feels far too severe to be them.

• For some people, not drinking at all is the right goal. If your body depends on alcohol, or a doctor has told you to stop, that matters more than any label. Speak to your GP before you change anything.

What happens at your first AA meeting?

We sat in rows.

The further left you walked down the rows, the better people seemed to be doing. The middle was where I sat; in my opinion, people waiting for something to happen, because they had to trust that something might work... And the seats nearest the door were for the ones you'd see once or twice, at most. Some got up and walked out within minutes.

Then the stories started. I don't know if every room is like this, but it felt like people were trading war stories. Almost flexing how bad their drinking had been.

The strangest thing was that it made me feel better about my drinking.

I sat there thinking, I'm not even close to having a problem yet. I've got so much further to go before things get bad for me.

Their stories took away my "rock bottom", because my rock bottom was nowhere near theirs.

...Even though my drinking was destroying every part of my life. It gave me justification.

Is Alcoholics Anonymous actually anonymous?

The groups are anonymous by design; it's a code. I think most people know that, whether they've ever been to a meeting or not.

But you can't be anonymous.

I sat down just behind and to the side of someone that was working at my daughter's school at the time.

I'd never say anything, I never did... That's the code.

But it wasn't anonymous.

The walk home

I'd been alcohol free for nearly three weeks when I went to that first meeting.

I didn't have a driving licence at the time... I'd lost it drink-driving. So I walked home... And drank on the way back.

I'd just sat in a room full of people talking about the one thing I couldn't have... The thing I'd wanted, and thought about, every day for three weeks.

It felt cruel, and ultimately opened the floodgates.

Why was I SO locked in on drinking?

Years later, my coach, Paul Mort, gave me a perspective on it that I've never forgotten.

Look around the room you're in right now. Don't look at anything red. Don't look at the red things.

Where did your eyes go? (I know the answer, by the way!)

Why can't you stop thinking about the thing you're trying not to think about?

Psychologists call it ironic process. In the 1980s, Daniel Wegner asked people not to think about a white bear. They thought about it more than the people who were allowed to. The part of your mind that checks you're not thinking about something keeps bringing it back to check.

That was my drinking.

Thinking about not going for a drink, not taking my wallet out with me, not walking past that shop, not letting everyone down; it was ALL putting my attention on alcohol.

Why does being told "don't" make you want it more?

Then there's psychological reactance, and when I found it, it was mind-blowing for me.

When we feel a freedom is being taken away, we push back to get it back. The thing we're told we can't have starts to look even more attractive. Psychologists have studied it since the 1960s.

Never trust your instincts. Admit you're powerless. One drink is too many. Every rule I was handed in that room took a choice away from me, and every part of me pushed back.

Being told not to do the one thing I couldn't stop thinking about was never going to work for me.

...The maddest thing is where I am now. In my work at Rethink Drink, I talk about alcohol, think about it and explain it more than I ever have in my life. And I couldn't care less about drinking it.

Alcohol free, but not free from alcohol

The longest I ever managed without a drink was six months. I was in secondary care through the NHS, with The Recovery Partnership, going to their meetings... They prescribed acamprosate, an anti-craving medicine, and I went to AA alongside it.

I wasn't drinking. But I wasn't free. And I was miserable.

As I mentioned above... I was still thinking about alcohol. Organising my thoughts so I wouldn't think about alcohol. Going to meetings to avoid alcohol, where we talked about alcohol. Leaving my wallet at home so I couldn't buy alcohol.

Those six months, my life revolved around alcohol more than it ever had. The tablets took the edge off the cravings enough that I didn't drink. But alcohol had never been more involved in my life.

The prescription was for six months... Six months and two weeks later, I was drinking again.

And that turned into the heaviest period of my life. I lied more than ever. I hid more than ever. It was like my occupation as a drinker had been promoted to director level.

I was a shareholder now. I had a vested interest.

Now I understand why... Take something that matters to the brain away, and the urge for it grows. Dr David Sinclair called it the alcohol deprivation effect... It's a cornerstone of his work.

I can see it's biological. I could feel it was biological. Back then I just thought I was failing.

Theme park, Coventry

One day sums it up for me.

We were at Alton Towers. My wife, my kids, having a brilliant day out. No alcohol anywhere near it.

And in a queue for a ride, my mind switched tracks.

How quickly can we get back?

Are we going to miss closing time at the shop?

How am I going to explain to my wife that I want to stop for a drink on the way home?

It became all-consuming. My body was at a theme park in Staffordshire. My head was at the local shop in Coventry.

I wasn't with my family in that moment. That's what alcohol use disorder takes from us.

The conflict

To wrap up the story of my AA journey...

I gave AA a proper go. I tried to fit in... But something wouldn't click. Maybe it was that first conversation I had.

...Of course I'll be told that I didn't follow the steps... I wasn't committed... I didn't surrender to the process... that I should try harder... I should use more willpower.

For those who know me, I think they would say I'm a logical, fair and reasonable person... My experience with AA conflicted with that.

If someone was doing well, it was AA. It was the steps, the fellowship, the meetings, the traditions, their sponsor.

But if someone was struggling, had relapsed, and not shown up because of it... They were at fault: not committed, not trying hard enough, not surrendered to the process, not following the steps properly.

They were outcast. Ignored, spoken about behind their backs, ultimately punished.

I know this won't represent all AA groups, but I can tell you this is my experience.

What the research actually says

When I started looking into it, the word "always" didn't hold up.

In a US government survey that asked 43,000 adults about their drinking, researchers looked at 4,422 people whose alcohol dependence had started more than a year earlier. About a quarter were still dependent. And 35.9% had fully recovered: 18.2% weren't drinking at all, and 17.7% were drinking at low-risk levels with no symptoms.

That's one survey, from the US, from twenty years ago. It doesn't mean everyone can drink safely again. It does mean "always" is the wrong word.

The label has a cost too. A 2022 UK study found that when heavy drinkers were shown the all-or-nothing "alcoholic" model, they were less likely to recognise they had a problem at all.

Most people don't see themselves in the word, so they decide they're fine.

That was me. For years.

We celebrate alcohol at births, business meetings, first dates and parties. Yet when someone develops a problem with that same drink, the reaction changes completely. They're judged, isolated, and shown far less understanding.

Stefani Busatta, from our team, once heard it put like this: "If punishment cured addiction, there would be no addicts in the world. Living with addiction is punishment enough."

Why the word "alcoholic" stopped mattering

I never felt I deserved that label. I honestly felt this was a period I was going through and couldn't shake.

Something in me just couldn't believe that the room was the only way.

Maybe that's what people in those circles would call denial. But here's what I see now.

The hardest part of drinking the way I did wasn't the drink. It was the broken promises. Today's the last day. Tomorrow will be different. Monday will be different this time. Day after day, week after week, I let myself down. Every broken promise took a bit more confidence from me and was eroding my self-worth.

When I started The Sinclair Method in October 2022, nobody asked me to call myself anything.

For me, the change was trust. I started keeping the promises. Not every time at first. But enough, little by little, that I began to trust myself again. And that confidence spilled over into work, into friendships, into everything.

The word "alcoholic" had defined me by one thing, when that thing was touching every area of my life. And while I could blame it on being an alcoholic, it wasn't mine to fix.

When the word stopped mattering, I took ownership. No excuse. Nothing to blame. I stopped feeling like a victim.

Now I'm free from thinking about alcohol, and I'm free from the label. I'm not defined by what I drink.

So, is it true?

Not as a rule for everyone...

Some people find that not drinking at all is what works for them, for good. That's a strong, valid choice. For some people, especially with severe dependence or liver damage, it's the safest one. Your doctor is the right person to help you decide.

But "always" isn't a law of nature. Your brain learned this pattern, and brains can unlearn.

That room down the road from me is still full of people struggling. Some turn up and don't stay an hour. Some are just willing something to change. I wanted to tell every one of them there's another way.

That's why we started Rethink Drink.

If the label is keeping you stuck

• Ask a better question. Not "am I an alcoholic?" but "can I keep the promises I make myself about drinking?"

• Count it. Our units calculator gives you the numbers without the drama.

• Check if your body depends on alcohol before you cut down or stop. Our guide on whether you need a detox explains the signs.

• See every route side by side. Our guide to alcohol treatment in the UK compares the NHS, rehab, medicines and support.

I hope this post has been useful. If you have any questions or would like to talk it through, you can contact me here.

Matt

P.S. If you read this post because you're looking for help for someone you love, we created a page for you: how to support someone struggling with alcohol. I also wrote a guide, The Family Support Guide... You're more than welcome to download a free copy from that page.

Please look after yourself

This page shares my experience and the research. It isn't medical advice. If you drink every day, or you get shaky, sweaty or anxious when you stop, speak to your GP before you change how much you drink. Drinkline, the national alcohol helpline, is free on 0300 123 1110.

Sources

• Dawson DA and others. Recovery from DSM-IV alcohol dependence: United States, 2001-2002. Addiction, 2005. Summary: NIAAA.

• Morris J, Moss AC, Albery IP, Heather N. The "alcoholic other": harmful drinkers resist problem recognition to manage identity threat. Addictive Behaviors, 2022; 124: 107093.

• Wegner DM and others. Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1987.

• Wegner DM. Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 1994.

• Steindl C and others. Understanding psychological reactance: new developments and findings. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 2015.

• NHS. Alcohol misuse.