Alcoholic Fraud

I felt like such a fraud. The idea that I needed to quit drinking alcohol — that I fit the classification of alcoholic — filled me with doubt and shame. Sure, I was ashamed of the instances when I drank too much, argued with my wife and wasted days nursing dehydration while trying to put together the pieces of the previous night. But I was also petrified with fear that I wasn’t alcoholic enough. I was holding my marriage together, my employment and finances were intact, I had no legal issues and I maintained my house on the weekends just like all my non-addicted neighbors. I was lying and denying if I ignored my condition, but I was a fraud if I claimed the affliction of the gutter bum or someone who drank away his family and possessions. I believed making the self-diagnosis of alcoholic or not alcoholic was a binary choice, and I was stuck firmly in the middle.

I took lots of those 20 question surveys you can find on the internet designed to help us determine our alcoholic status, and I answered some of the questions yes and some of them no. I did drink to blackout sometimes. I did have trouble stopping once I started drinking. But I didn’t experience delirium tremens and I didn’t drink everyday. I didn’t want to label myself an alcoholic, and those internet quizzes gave me the ammunition of denial. But my trepidation was more than that. When I did feel the trauma related to the yes answers outweighed the…