Earlier tonight, my friends and I were having a fun argument, and I've decided to bring it on here for you guys to help us decide on who is right or wrong.
I had asked my friends that if someone had told them that they quit drinking, and for the next seven days, they made sure not to touch a bottle of alcohol, only to go back to drinking on the eighth day. Does that mean that they never stopped drinking, or could that person proudly say that they stopped it?
My friend is of the opinion that if you go back to something that you had initially planned on stopping entirely, that you never really stopped that stuff to begin with, and I disagree with him. Because I do believe that every little progress matters, even though you end up backsliding and going back to that old habit.
I had gone further to give him a scenario that we all could relate to. I had asked him that if a police officer decides to retire and after five years of retirement, he changes his mind and decides to come back to the police force, probably because he misses his job as a policeman, does that mean that the officer never retired?
Of course it doesn't. He did retire for the past five years, and just because he came back to work doesn't mean that we can now all say that he never retired.
Now if we all apply this same logic to the drinking addiction question, I guess we can all agree that my friend was wrong and I was right.
No matter how short your sober period was, the fact remains that you stayed sober for a limited amount of time, and no one should tell you otherwise or try to ignore the little progress you made by saying that it didn't count.