If you think you may be alcoholic, you need to understand something very clearly:
You will not be able to solve this problem on your own.
Certainly, if I could have, I would have. And if I could drink alcohol without it causing the problems it caused me, I would absolutely still be drinking.
I liked drinking. I liked getting drunk. I didn’t want to stop. What I wanted was to find a way to keep drinking without alcohol affecting me the way it was.
I couldn’t find one.
If you can, my hat is off to you. But my guess is that if you are seriously asking whether you may be alcoholic, you have already discovered how difficult that resting place is to find. And if you can consistently control your drinking and its consequences, you may be dealing with something different from the condition we described in What Makes Someone Alcoholic?
There Had to Be Another Way
I tried everything I could think of to make drinking work.
I tried controlling how much I drank. I switched from “hard liquor” to beer or wine. I decided what time I could start drinking—not before noon, for example. But then again, it’s five o’clock somewhere, isn’t it?
I made rules for myself when we went out to dinner. I made sincere, honest promises. I decided I would do things differently the next time.
And I kept trying, honestly and sincerely.
Surely there had to be some resting place between what was happening to me and never drinking again.
There wasn’t.
And I could not believe there wasn’t. It seemed completely illogical to me.
I was the one doing the drinking.
I was the one putting alcohol into my body.
Therefore, I should have been the one capable of doing it differently and getting a different result.
That made perfect sense to me.
Yet I couldn’t do it.
And so the thinking continued:
There has to be a way.
I just haven’t found it yet.
I can figure this out.
I’ll do better next time.
This time will be different.
Those thoughts kept the possibility of continuing to drink alive because the alternative—never drinking again—was unacceptable to me.
Until it wasn’t.
I Didn’t Think I Had the Problem
There was another complication.
For a long time, I didn’t think my drinking was really my problem. Other people had a problem with my drinking. My wife certainly did.
But that was her problem.
In fact, I tried to help her deal with her problem with my drinking.
I could see that I drank too much. I could see that I got too drunk. I could see that other people didn’t like what happened when I did.
What I couldn’t see was why any of that meant I had the problem.
That is one reason simply asking yourself, “Am I alcoholic?” may not settle the question. The person trying to evaluate the problem is also the person experiencing it.
In The Doctor’s Opinion in Alcoholics Anonymous, Dr. William Silkworth describes the alcoholic as eventually being unable to distinguish “the true from the false.” The alcoholic life can actually begin to seem like the only normal one to the person living it.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the person is intentionally lying.
My thinking and reasoning made sense to me.
But the biggest part of my problem was “my thinking.”
You Don’t Have to Figure Out Why Yet
Maybe you’re already asking another question:
Why did this happen to me?
There are many possible contributors to alcoholism. Genetics can play a role. So can environment, stress, trauma, mental health conditions, learned behavior and repeated exposure to alcohol.
Those questions can matter, but they are not the first questions you have to answer.
Sometimes the answer to “Why did you drink?” is pretty simple.
I liked it.
That doesn’t explain everything about how I became alcoholic, but it explains a lot about why I kept drinking.
There is an important difference between asking why you drank, how you became alcoholic, and what you can do about it now.
You don’t have to completely answer the first two before beginning to answer the third.
So What Do You Do?
Talk to people who understand alcoholism because they have lived it. That is one reason I recommend going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
You don’t have to walk into AA already convinced that you are alcoholic. You don’t have to understand the Twelve Steps. You don’t have to agree with everything you hear. You don’t have to adopt someone else’s religious beliefs. You don’t even have to know whether AA is going to work for you.
AA says the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership.
So go investigate. Listen to people talk about what happened when they drank, what they did to stop, and what their lives are like today. Listen for similarities rather than differences.
Ask questions. And don’t make your decision about AA based upon one meeting.
And by the way…
I did that too.
The First Time I Asked AA for Help
About six months before I stopped drinking, I went to an AA meeting. I was drunk. During the meeting I spoke out and told them I was shitfaced and needed help.
I wanted an answer.
Right then.
I was told to get with someone after the meeting, so I had to wait. After the meeting, I talked with someone. He told me to come back the next day and learn more.
That wasn’t the answer I wanted.
I was angry.
I went there for help. I wanted them to give me the answer, and as far as I was concerned, they hadn’t. So I didn’t go back.
Six months later, I did.
The AA meeting hadn’t changed.
My circumstances had.
Things Got Worse
During those six months, things didn’t get better.
They got worse.
My wife eventually left me because I kept breaking my promises. She thought I was a liar.
But even then, I didn’t see what she saw.
I thought leaving was a terrible decision on her part and certainly no way for her to deal with her problem. It was terrible for us. It was terrible for me.
But if leaving was what she needed to do to get help with her problem, I would go along with it—for her.
Think about that for a moment.
My wife had left me because of my drinking, and I was still able to reason my way to the conclusion that she was the one who needed help.
My thinking still made sense to me.
I Tried Treatment Too
Eventually, I voluntarily entered a four-day treatment program. It wasn’t to get my wife back. She was gone, and I was just fine with that—although I still thought it was stupid of her to leave.
It was for me.
I stayed about a day and a half and then signed myself out against their wishes.
I am not telling you that as advice to leave treatment against medical recommendations. Quite the opposite. I had no withdrawal symptoms, and they didn’t need to give me medication. But that doesn’t mean treatment was unnecessary.
I needed the reprieve.
For some people, treatment may be the place where they can safely get far enough away from alcohol to begin thinking clearly about what is happening to them.
There is another important reason professional medical care may be necessary. Someone who has been drinking heavily for a prolonged period can experience dangerous and sometimes life-threatening withdrawal if they suddenly stop drinking. That needs to be taken seriously.
My experience was different. I didn’t need medical treatment for withdrawal.
What I needed was enough separation from drinking to finally recognize something I had been unable to recognize while I was drinking.
After about a day and a half, I knew what I needed to do.
I needed to go back to that AA room.
And this time I did.
What If I Can’t Afford Treatment?
Cost can become another reason to do nothing.
Professional treatment can cost money. Insurance coverage varies. Different people need different levels and kinds of professional care.
AA is different in one very practical respect:
It is free.
There are no dues or fees for AA membership. Groups support themselves through voluntary contributions from their members.
So even if you cannot afford treatment, don’t turn that into:
There’s nothing I can do.
There is something you can do.
Go to a meeting.
You can attend one in person. You can attend one online. You can listen. You can ask questions. You can talk with someone afterward. And you can go back.
Find out whether the people sitting in that room understand something about what is happening to you that you haven’t been able to understand by yourself.
You Don’t Have to Wait Until You Reach My Bottom
Eventually, I reached a point where the alternative I had refused to accept became the only alternative I could accept.
I knew:
If I put one more drop of this shit into my body, I am going to die.
I wasn’t suicidal. And I wasn’t necessarily predicting that my next drink would immediately kill me physically.
There are many ways to die while continuing to breathe.
You can lose your marriage. Your family. Your livelihood. Your freedom. Your relationships. Your dignity. Your character.
You can remain physically alive while watching the life you once had disappear around you.
I finally understood where I was headed.
But here is what I want you to understand:
You don’t have to go that far.
You don’t have to prove that you are alcoholic by losing everything alcoholism can take from you.
If you read What Makes Someone Alcoholic? and recognize enough about yourself to be asking this question, investigate it now.
You don’t even have to declare:
“I am an alcoholic.”
Find out.
Take One Step
Today I don’t describe myself as an alcoholic still in recovery.
I am a nondrinker.
As long as I don’t put alcohol into my body, that is where I will remain.
I still attend AA meetings. In fact, I run one meeting every week and sometimes two. I continue going because what I learned there helps me stay where I am.
If someone offers me a drink today, I don’t struggle with the answer.
I simply say:
“No, I have reached and exceeded my quota for this lifetime.”
But I didn’t get from where I was to where I am today by figuring everything out first.
I took a step.
Then another.
So if you think you may be alcoholic, don’t try to solve the rest of your life today.
Take one step.
Go listen to people who have been where you are. Ask questions. Find out.
You can find an in-person AA meeting through the official Alcoholics Anonymous meeting finder.
Find an in-person AA meeting:
https://www.aa.org/find-aa
You can also attend an AA meeting online from wherever you are.
Find an online AA meeting:
https://aa-intergroup.org/meetings/
You don’t have to know where all of this is going before you begin.
You only have to be willing to find out.
Leave a Reply