Brad Pitt drinking again after 7 years sober

I read the Brad Pitt story today about him drinking again after seven years of sobriety, and I thought it was interesting because I could relate to a lot of what he was saying.

I’ll be four years sober this December. Almost every aspect of my life has improved since I stopped drinking. I’m healthier, more productive, more stable, and my life is objectively better.

But the truth is, I still think about drinking all the time.

Not necessarily in the sense that I’m about to go buy a bottle. I just miss it. I miss the good old days. I miss going out, drinking, the excitement of it, the social aspect, that feeling of shutting everything off for a while. And obviously my brain tends to remember the good parts a lot more fondly than the reasons I eventually stopped.

So reading about someone who was sober for seven years and then decided he could drink again in a more controlled way immediately raises that question in my head: is that actually possible? All the materials I’ve read about moderation say you should still stop completely & do a reset.

Can somebody who once had a bad relationship with alcohol spend years sober, change their life, get older and more disciplined, and eventually drink differently? Or is even entertaining that idea just your brain finding a very sophisticated way to talk you back into the same old shit?

What makes it difficult for me is that I can look at my life and clearly see that sobriety has been good for me while simultaneously still missing drinking. I’m curious how other people here deal with that contradiction. Do you still romanticize drinking years later? And for anyone who had several years sober and then tried moderation, what actually happened?