How to safely un-quit drinking?

You said you wanted literature. Check out the work of Insoo Kim-Berg and Scott Miller. Particularly http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393315339/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ Rabbitrabbit had it right. If you find yourself questioning whether or not you're on the right track, most likely, you're not on the right track. Sounds like a dud of an answer, but it is probably the truth. If you want support with reintegrating alcohol into your life, see a therapist who is well versed in harm reduction. Ask yourself exactly what it is you want from alcohol keep in mind that it's a tricky substance for many people and don't feel bad if your new relationship doesn't work out.

This doesn't actually answer your specific questions, but I consider myself a moderate drinker, and I think 9 drinks a week is a lot. I am a woman who has spent a lot of time in France and I'm down with the whole red wine as health-food thing, but 9 drinks a week just strikes me as a lot. As in, if I knew one of my female friends was changing their lifestyle to incorporate that much drinking, I'd be concerned. Also - and this is really important - one serving of alcohol referred to as a "1 drink" is much less than what people serve themselves and call one drink. So if you're looking at studies about alcohol and drinking habits and they refer to # of drinks, it's actually much less alcohol than you visualize. This is especially true for wine! People fill up the glass, and it's really 2 or 2.5 the amount for "1 drink." I'm a little too lazy to dig it up the cites now, but there are studies that show that people don't really know how much other people drinking. The heavy drinkers are most visible and skew other people's perceptions of "normal" or "moderate" even though the actual "moderate" people are drinking way less than what the heavy drinkers call "moderate." You don't mention this as a concern, but I'll throw it out there: alcohol has a lot of calories.

If you're going to drink during the week, you need to combine your date night/nice meal/board game nights into one night per week. I get that there is something special about having a few drinks at home with your SO, and in fact it's the only thing I miss about drinking. (I'm a couple of years into what may be almost a decade of pregnancies and nursing.) I think one night drinking out and one night drinking in is plenty of drinking per week.

I would probably not keep alcohol in the house if I were you. I am not a big drinker, but I loooove ice cream. When ice cream is at my house, I will eat it. When ice cream is at the store, it doesn't really seem worth it. Also, drinking in bars is expensive and may be the built-in "oh snap do I really want to do this?" mechanism you need.

Doing this as precisely as you've outlined so as to stay within predetermined limits of moderate drinking betrays that this will be uncomfortable at best. It's 'white knuckling' through abstaining from drinking only it's white knuckling through staying within a set of rules in order to drink two drinks x amount of times a week. That sounds painful and risky–not relaxing and happy. A few people above have outlined ways they keep their drinking in check–perimeters they have established that work for them. I quit drinking 1.5 years ago in order to avoid nicotine relapse. I realized it was easier to quit everything than to attempt to do anything within 'moderation'. Nine drinks a week isn't what I think of as moderate, though. Also, the lack of subsequent/consecutive drinks may or may not work for you. You need to ask why this is important to you and your partner after five years of sobriety because, if you are addicted to alcohol, this either won't work at all or it will be an exercise in extreme discipline. Reintroducing alcohol into your system will ramp up how often you think about drinking. As well, doing this with your partner complicates things if you decide you want to go back to sobriety and they don't (or vice versa). I would definitely talk to a therapist about guidelines for this. Put support in place and find what works for you specifically. Good luck.

My doctor just quoted me the figure of seven drinks per week - not nine - as the lower-risk level for women. Looks like this http://www.moderation.org/otherlim.shtml site (about which I know nothing else) also agrees. And what is being said about the number of drinks is true. A "drink" of wine is 5 ounces - just a little over half a cup. Most people pour a much bigger glass of wine than that if not measuring. Your "low-consumption" plan looks a lot like some of our highest-drinking weeks around my house, and frankly when we are doing that I think it's way too much and we have worked to cut back and pull in our own parameters. I'd like to be at no more than two nights a week, no more than two drinks a session, with very rare exceptions. I found this interesting http://www.checkyourdrinking.net/CYD/CYDScreenerP1_0.aspx site which gives feedback on your drinking habits and how they compare to the rest of the population your age. It's based on data from Canada, but I doubt there's a massive difference. It may help you get a sense whether your number of proposed drinks and drinking events per week is truly average, or greater or lesser than average. I can tell you that I put in my habits on a fairly typical week (12 drinks over 7 days) and that puts me well above the average.

(Also, I don't know if budget is a concern, but that site lets you enter the average cost of a drink. We go out maybe twice a week to have a meal with some drinks or just some drinks, and otherwise buy a six-pack or wine to bring home. And I'm spending $1500 a year on that stuff. Yikes. Do you have the money to change this habit?)

This adds up to drinking, at minimum 3/7 night of the weeks, and at maximum, 6/7 nights of the week. I drink whenever I feel like it, enjoy wine, and am friends with a lot of people who feel the same way. I'm not trying to be insulting but just honest - the only two people I know who drink as often as the above are the two who exhibit all the generally accepted signs of alcoholism. I'm not trying to say drinking that often is an indication that you are an alcoholic or it is an alcoholic behavior in and of itself. Just trying to give you an idea of "average" behavior in my particular social circle. Let me ask you a question. Say you were going to have one of these drinking nights. Maybe the game night. If you were planning to have the game night that night, and then found out you could not have alcohol (say you didn't get to the liquor store before it closed) would you be disappointed/upset?

Nine drinks a week sounds like a lot to me. I consider myself a moderate drinker at 4-5 a week. Most weeks 2-3.