It's the first drink that gets you drunk.

It was such a revelation to me that if I didn't start drinking, if I didn't take that first drink or drug then I couldn't get drunk.  That the first drink is part of an obsessive/compulsive process that always has an end in drunkenness amazed me when I finally saw the light.

I remember a guy who said in his drunkalog that when he heard this he thought he had the clue to avoid geting drunk. It seems that so many of us come to A.A. thinking it will teach us how to drink in safety.  He went into a bar and he ordered a drink and he carefully set it to one side.  Then he ordered a second drink which he drank and then, of course, another and another until he was drunk as usual.  When he came to and came back to A.A., it took him some time to understand what went wrong.  But he wasn't sick...