Making a decision and following thru has been a life saver me in so many areas of my life over the years. I find without it I'm vulnerable to many things primarily like you said because I believe Control is a all or Nothing thing:( I heard once,"If you dont stand for something You may fall for anything" Made perfect sense to me:))
Billy

Thanks Billy. It's true. I am extremely ambivalent about change and struggle to commit to anything. I like that quote. For sure, I have fallen for far too much because I don't know what I stand for.

Somebody once told me that if you have to hide your bottles, that's a sure sign of an alcoholic so when I got sober, I showed my wife where all my hiding places were and it felt good not to have that hanging over my head, always worried she might find them and know I've been drinking. Lies are like a cancer, they multiply and further down the road cause far worse problems then we could ever imagine!

That's what happened to me. If I could have seen into the future during my drinking days at the damage I was going to cause my family and friends, and coworkers, I would have stopped drinking in a heartbeat! I would have gone for help. I would have done detox and substance abuse treatment far sooner then I did.

Nowadays I attend occasional AA meetings and live my life by the 12 steps and I have never been happier.

Good Luck!

the thing that stuck out to me the most was alcohol has stolen everything you loved in your life.
When people ask me if I think they are alcoholic...I ask? Has alcohol affected your life?

If is does....than alcohol is a problem.

And the fact that you have searched for a website to talk about an addiction and problem...is another clue that it IS a problem.

I have the problem..I will be here..to help you thru....keep coming.

Hi Unsure. I have tried to quit drinking several times myself. I'm hoping that I can find an accountability partner here.

Wow, thank you for sharing. I can relate to everything you said. In my case I drink every day after work in my room. I don't usally go to bars because I do not want to drink and drive. I drink about 8 beers a night after work then go to sleep just to do it again the next day. I live with my mother who is a recovering alcoholic, I really realy do not know how I've managed to hide from her. The thing is that I'm I do not want to continue like this. Today I make a commitment to stop the vicious circle. Today I will not drink.

Hello eshaw,

The bad news is that alcohol can steal a lot more from you unless you accept the reality of your drinking and do something about it; the good news is that you can regain your freedom and live a happy and sober life. When I was in a similar place to where you are now my thinking was all wrong and although I did not know it at the time, where drinking was concerned, I had trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality.

Neither I nor anyone else on this forum can say that you are an alcoholic as you are the only one who can make that call. However, many things in your post are screaming out the word alcoholism. You think that you have a handle on your drinking but that is an illusion because what you are doing is far from being normal. You believe that you are not hurting anyone but I bet that at a minimum you are hurting your daughter and hurting yourself.

The things that you describe such as finding yourself being drawn to the store to purchase alcohol; hiding the bottles; deceiving your doctor and your daughter etc. are the result of drinking becoming an obsession for you and that is one of the signs of alcoholism. You can go a few days without drinking but that will change because alcoholism is a progressive condition and eventually you will be likely to be drinking all day, every day.

A second sign of alcoholism is when one or two drinks are not enough and the first drink leads to many more. This happens when a drinker develops an abnormal reaction in the body to alcohol and one drink produces a craving for more. You may be in the early stages of this physical change or you may be quite a distance down the road but I think that it does not really matter either way. The reality may be that you are well past the point where you can drink safely and once you cross that line there is no going back.

From reading your post I get the impression that you know yourself that the game is up as far as drinking is concerned. You say that you are afraid of giving it up and having nothing left to make you feel at peace and I can certainly understand those thoughts because I have been in such a place. I believed that I could not stop drinking and that if by some miracle I did stop, life without alcohol would not be worth living. I was completely wrong on both counts but like I stated above, I could not tell the difference between fantasy and reality at the time.

What has worked for me is going to AA meetings and copying what other people did in order to overcome the same problem that I had. You dont want it to turn into a problem but what you are doing is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. I know some young people like your daughter who often visit the graveyard to cry at the place where their mother lies because of drinking. Maybe you should check out AA meetings in your area.

I read this again...my son (youngest) would die if he knew I was drinking again.

This has to stop...we have to get stronger. :(

Hi eshaw, I once drank in a similar way to you and thought I had s handle on it. It got worse and I STILL thought I had a handle on it... Clearly there was something wrong with my thinking in regard to alcohol.

I went to AA and learned about the different ways in which alcoholism affects me. I found it was nothing to do with being strong or weak - it's an illness that is progressive in nature. It progressed in me just as it does in any other alcoholic. Except I didn't think so, just like many other alcoholics. I discovered that I had a mental delusion when it came to control around alcohol. A sick mind cannot heal itself so I got all the help I could.

Here's an article from a reliable source that has nothing to do with AA which gives a simple outline of what people like me experience:

http://psychcentral.com/lib/alcoholism-and-its-treatment/000270?all=1

Thanks fairilse, The link you have provided has an excellent article on alcoholism and I see other contributions on that website that also look interesting.