Am I an alcoholic?
This is a question every alcoholic has to answer for themselves before they get sober. And they will have to answer honestly and without reservation yes!
Otherwise sobriety will be hard come by if ever attained at all. Why get sober if you're not a drunk?
Years ago drunkards who were of lower socioeconomic backgrounds were considered to be people with serious immoral if not criminal behaviors.
The idea that someone could have a genuine uncontrollable or near uncontrollable desire to do something so obviously harmful is fairly recent.
For many centuries the aristocracy or at least higher socioeconomic backgrounds, usually well-educated and from upper-class families were not considered drunkards. They were shielded by their wealth, family and position. This is a situation not at all uncommon today as long as one avoids the public eye.
It wasn't until the 1800s that any form of the disease concept of alcoholism became popular. A German doctor translated a book by a Russian doctor and translated the termTrunksucht as dipsomania.The medical profession divided dipsomania up into elaborate schemes of continuous, periodic, intermittent, recurrent, and probably some others that I don't even know about. This sounds a lot like Alcoholism to me.
In later years it became popular to call some drunks alcoholic's while others were simply problem drinkers.
I have calculated the difference between a problem drinker and an alcoholic to be approximately $75,000 a year.
They both drink alike, one simply has the money to buy their way out of trouble and the other does not. One can afford the highest quality and other must budget for quantity.
However nicely you put it alcoholics drink and drink to excess, they may or may not drink frequently but almost always get drunk at the most inconvenient and inappropriate times.
I am not as dedicated to the disease concept of alcoholism as our some of my friends. On the other hand I am convinced it is some form of mental illness or malady.
Certainly if unchecked it will lead to serious long-term psychological physical and mental and spiritual deterioration.
I do not believe it is my fault I am an alcoholic I certainly believe it is my fault and my responsibility if I add alcohol to my alcoholic mind.
Lately there has been much in the news magazines, television, the Internet and other media about binge drinking, especially teenage binge drinking.
Some consider binge drinking alcoholism some think it just a pattern that will lead to alcoholism.
There is no doubt it leads to many teenage pregnancies, increases High School dropout rates and most tragic of all, causes thousands of drunk driving related deaths and injuries.
The national Institute on alcoholism and alcohol abuse has determined that binge drinking consists of five drinks in one day for men four in a day for women.
I'm not a scientist and I don't know if that in fact qualifies one as a binge drinker or not. I do know that I frequently had five drinks in one hour. Towards the end five drinks in one day would have been cutting back.
Others I know drank far less and are just as alcoholic as me. How is that? Alcoholism is more a state of mind than a state of body.
Its root is an obsessive thought that supersedes all others, followed by a compulsion as a strong as the compulsion to eat food or drink water when starving.
Craving is as a friend once described it, "like climbing the walls with your teeth." I thank God there is relief and release in prayer. That God can and will stand in the gap for me.
The alcoholic mind will be, without proper supervision flooded with thoughts of alcohol and a craving difficult to explain to those who have never been addicted. Left unchecked these thoughts and cravings will produce actions.
In the end I have found that I must allow God to supervise my thoughts and meditations lest my desire for alcohol turn on me and again destroy my life.
