This Need for Perfection

Last night, my husband and I enjoyed a nice evening with our neighbors, who we are really good friends with. We each have fire pits in our back yards and every summer, we hang out roasting marshmallows (vegan ones, in our case) and stay up talking around the fire for hours. In the past, I would bring a bottle of wine and tear through the entire thing over the course of the evening while my friends sipped on rum and cokes. Last night I had a bottle of O'Doul's followed by a big mug of my favorite tea (I had a lovely time, by the way). And the whole evening, I worried about drinking the non-alcoholic beer. I've posted about this before, the attitude that the AA community seems to have with non-alcoholic beer and wine. I've read that alcoholics should run far away from these beverages because they may cause relapses. Lately, I've been reading that we shouldn't drink them because they keep us locked into alcoholic thinking and behaviors. I'm taking my sobriety very seriously and I am concerned that I am somehow jeapardizing everything by enjoying an O'Doul's.

And then, I remembered that one of the reasons I drink is because of perfectionism. Beating myself up for drinking a non-alcoholic beer is a symptom of that. I realize that I am applying my perfectionist behavior to my sobriety and this is confusing me. 

I do think that whether or not drinking non-alcoholic beer and wine is really a personal choice. It depends on the individual. If your drink of choice was rum and coke, would you now have to avoid coke? If you always liked screwdrivers, do you now have to steer clear of orange juice (which, by the way, has more alcohol by volume than non-alcoholic beer)?

If I am trying to break a cycle with regards to fear and perfectionism, isn't judging my drinking an O'Doul's only feeding those things? I didn't feel any sort of compulsion to have a real beer after having the O'Doul's. I had one and was quite ready to switch to tea. Beer was never really my drink of choice, anyway. Sober Julie has written a mocktail recipe book which is celebrated on The Bubble Hour. Isn't that replacement? Isn't that dangerous?

I guess it's up to the person. I am committed to do the work I need to do on myself. I don't think that having an occasional O'Doul's is going to get in the way of that. I am even thinking about attending a SMART meeting tomorrow night. Am I just lying to myself about the O'Doul's? I suppose that I will develop a more clear picture about what works for me over time and I suppose I should simply give myself the flexibility to change this as time goes on. I like being sober, that much I know.

Today is Day 14. Two weeks.