Dotty, one of the ways denial manifested for me was thinking that it was the home drinkers, the "cupboard drinkers" who were the ones with the problem, ie if they had to hide it away like that - there must have been a problem with them, but not me as I was out there "having a good time" in the pubs, clubs, dives, post-work drinks and parties. Of course all I achieved by drinking the way I did, compared to cupboard drinkers was to make a complete DICK of myself in public for 18 years of blackout drinking, and to place myself in terribly dangerous situations. And lo and behold, when I got to AA I met "cupboard drinkers" who thought the REAL alcoholics were the ones who drank in public like me - the denial got at us either way, and both types of drinkers were alcoholics equally.

I also justified my drinking by calling myself a party girl, a rager (an Australia term which also means a big part animal), a party animal, a femme fatale (yes, that's what I thought - yuk) and more sayings along those lines. Once I got sober I realised it was all a delusion, just yet another prop to justify my drinking and thus I had been in utter denial. And I can tell you that by the time I stopped drinking, I was certainly none of those things, if I ever had been. I ended up a desperate, scuzzy pub drunk who even annoyed the hardest of hard drinkers in the pubs with my endless incomprehensible babble.

I was also in extreme denial about the effect that my drinking had had on other people, including employers, friends, family and most of all my Mum. My Dad drank himself to death and she would ring me crying saying that I was drinking just the way he did and she was scared I was gonna die and I told her to F Off. Charming. But I did get to make amends to her.