When one alcoholic/addict shares with another alcoholic/addict

[MajestyJo]

This may be a duplicate. It is something I posted on another site in 2010.

Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be
accomplished.

Big Book, p. 18

So many times, we compare instead of identify. We look or hear someone and say, "Well I didn't do that, perhaps I am not an alcoholic." Until we can identify for ourselves, nothing anyone can say or do, can really help us. We will always have that doubt which will generally lead back to a drink. I know for me, it was a door I didn't want to shut. I wanted that out!

I was unable to look at the whole picture. I didn't have the same results a lot of people had with alcohol but I did with prescription pills which the Big Book refers to as dried-up alcohol.

What I had was the thinking behind the drinking. I was a functioning alcoholic who thought because she could walk a straight line, she was just fine! Frustrated, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional is the polite way of saying it! I didn't want to think about the fact that I had matched my partner drink for drink and in some cases, had a few extra. In my mind, when I got angry, I got sober. It was like I drank myself sober many times and I know others have shared the same thing.

When I was about 27, I went with a guy who drank a lot and you didn't know he had been drinking, or I should say, I didn't know he had been drinking. He drank a 26 an evening when with me and I later realized he often had at least a mickey before he connected with me. My thinking was, "I wonder if I can drink fast enough to keep up with him." Yet this is the person who didn't think she was an alcoholic. At 26, I was alwasy looking forward to pay day because it meant Chinese food and Whiskey Sours. The thought was often there, even when the alchol was not.

In other words, I qualified for AA, long before I got there.

The last line is so true. I can remember being upset that I stayed in denial for so long and missed out on so much of my life.

I also know that no one could have told me I was an alcoholic. The program didn't begin to really work for me until I could get past the denial and quit comparing my journey to that of others. I had to get in touch with my feelings and then I could identify with others.