How do I know it is time to move on?
I don't. I need to talk this out with someone in AA that I trust.
What is my understanding of Step One?
My understanding of step one is that it is centered around the accepting at a deep level the cause-effect relationship between my life problems and my drinking problem. That I have a problem and it is addiction. It affects the way I think, feel and act and it is not limited to whether I actively drink or not. Taking drink out of the equation helps but it doesn't constitute recovery, it only enables it.
I also know that Step One involves understanding the concept of powerlessness in regard to my addiction. I know that once I start drinking I am gripped my a compulsion to drink more and more. In that situation I am powerless over my addiction.
For me the unmanageablilty was more a matter of what goes on in my inner life as my outward life does not look all that bad. I still have my job, my marriage, our house. On the inside though I recognise the unmanageability and particularly with regard to my emotions and ways of thinking.
Someone said recently that it is alcoholism not alcoholwasm. That once you become an alcholic you always will be one. So returning to drinking is not an option unless I want all that comes along with it. Which I don't.
How has my prior knowledge and experience affected my work on this step?
In that we are always affected by our knowledge and experience, yes. I have tried to learn from the experience of others too though and particularly from listening to others in meetings and informal chats about recovery. I think modelling the success of others negates the need to re-invent the wheel ... but that this has to be balanced against the need to make things real in our own lives.
