Estimated read time: 8 min
As my wife and other alcoholics who are waaaaaayyyyy smarter than me often say, “If you ask that question, then you probably know the answer.” Still, if you are like me and stayed in denial through 28 years of hard drinking, always hoping that somehow the joy from the first experiments in drunkenness will return, you may have some questions that linger into your earliest days of getting sober.
Defining whether or not any person is an alcoholic is not as easy as diagnosing some diseases. There are tests that can show the effects of too much drinking, and there are screening tests that can hint at a use disorder, which is the technical term for the disease alcoholics and addicts have.
Perhaps because there is a significant business based on drinking, there are debates about binge drinking vs. heavy drinking and whether either equates to alcoholism. There are a ton of on-line tests that a person can take, and from my experience intentionally lie when answering questions so that “alcoholic” does not appear at the end of the test. I even have a humorous book in the works about ways to tell that you “might be” an alcoholic. You can find a sample of those on Facebook and Instagram.
Some fellow alcoholics, and at least one book I have read, recommend that a person try to drink one drink and stop. A friend of mine did this. He drank one beer at a bar and realized he didn’t want another one. He then left the bar and bought a 12-pack on the way home to celebrate his accomplishment. The same sources also recommend trying to quit drinking and using drugs completely for 30 days and see how far you can make it.
My sponsor told me, “When in doubt, go drink. You will either decide you need help to quit, die, or not be an alcoholic.” I don’t recommend any of these as a way to determine whether you are one of us. All three of these choices could end in death, either from withdrawals or a bender that leads to alcohol poisoning, and being a dead alcoholic doesn’t help you answer your question, now does it.
There are a couple of things I have heard and learned in my time of recovery to kind of give people a hint about whether or not they have a problem with alcohol or drugs. It can be summed up in a saying, “The three things that force a drunk into recovery are livers, lovers or lawyers.” The three “L”s are a good indication, and much better than asking someone who is in recovery. We (alcoholics and addicts in recovery) are notorious for not giving advice or saying outright that you dear reader are a bonafide, A-100, solid-gold alkie.
It’s almost like we are scared to place a curse on someone. For whatever reason, I have heard alcoholics in recovery tell questioning newcomers something like, “I can only give you my experience, you have to decide for yourself if you are an alcoholic.” To a large extent, that is absolutely correct, but that is another topic for another day.
For now, back to the three “L”s…
The first L (livers): If you are having some type of health problem due to your drinking or drugging, you are most likely an addict or alcoholic. That’s the livers part.
The Second L (lovers): If your loved ones have decided “to intervene” in your lifestyle and ship you off to treatment, you may consider that a big hint that you are one of us. That’s the lovers.
The Third L (lawyers): If your legal bills through DUIs, divorces or any other combination of problems severely limits your ability to feel financially stable, but you find that you still have plenty of money to drink and drug… That’s the lawyer part and probably means that it is time to throw in the towel and seek some help.
Ultimately, I came to the decision to go to treatment to prove that I wasn’t an alcoholic. Looking back it was not my smartest plan, but saved my freaking life.
I have been told that I am a high-bottom drunk. That comes directly from my sponsor and a few other alcoholics who apparently got more of a butt whoopin’ from booze than they think I did. To an extent, they are correct. That is probably because, until the last six months of my drinking career, I kept a job. I had a large home on a large piece of land and a pond in the backyard. I never had a DUI or citation for public drunkenness. I had never been warned on the job that I smelled a little boozy after a heavy night of drinking. I could maintain reasonably long periods of staying dry, ranging from weeks to six months. That part of my drinking career almost convinced me I was not an alcoholic despite spending more than 40 days in treatment and attending AA meetings twice a day for months.
Still, if I could have been in any state other than constant denial, all of the signs were there. I often drank more than I planned to when I started drinking. I would make multiple runs to pick up more beer or wine, because I kept running low. I would drink daily when I could. I drank in the mornings and evenings while on vacation. Every hotel I wanted to stay in had a bar, and every restaurant I liked served drinks. I lost my keys while drinking and rode a bike to the store to buy more booze. It wasn’t that I got drunk every time I drank; I just happened to get drunk at the worst possible times.
My career suffered because of my drinking, not that I realized it at the time, but I was forever behind on grading papers because I forever graded papers with a drink in hand. When I called a treatment center at the young age of 43, I honestly thought I would be sent home in two days—three, tops—because I didn’t truly have a problem. Drinking was the only thing that calmed my nerves and made me feel sort of normal at times. Ooooo boy I was wrong.
Still, you may have read all of that about me and thought, “I’m not THAT bad.”
Here’s the big secret. You don’t have to be. If the way you are living is not what you want it to be, and you think the drugs or booze might be a problem, that’s good enough. There does not have to be an epiphany, a moment of clarity that comes in a jail cell, or an exciting trip to the emergency room. You can simply decide, “I don’t like this and I want to talk to some people who got sick and tired of it, too.” And the easiest place to find some people in recovery is at a local 12-step meeting.
In most 12-step meetings, the only requirement for attending is a DESIRE to stop drinking. I have known people who showed up or were court-mandated (there goes that lawyer thing again) to attend to see if they had a problem. Some decided they did and stayed. Others, I guess, are doing well and were not in need of help after all.
I have known people who attended a meeting so drunk they could barely sit in a seat and others who drank before and after meetings for months before they got sober. And, I have also known people who got tired of being drunk on weekends and have been happily sober for almost a decade. So if you are wondering whether you might be an alcoholic, stop by a meeting and listen to the people there who tell their stories. See if you can identify, AND if you can see yourself in what they say, keep coming back.
The thing I always keep in mind now is that it doesn’t hurt me to abstain from drinking and drugging. I spent years trying to find a way that my drinking was beneficial, and ultimately the answer had always been NO. Recent medical studies have debunked the one-glass-of-wine-a-day-is-good-for-you theory. (A theory to which I wholeheartedly subscribed and added a bottle or two to the “one glass” for good measure.) There is literally nothing beneficial about booze as far as your health is concerned.
So if you, dear reader, wonder if you are one of us, put down the bottle and reach out. The worst that can happen is that it saves your life…
Thanks for reading! Please like, share, and comment below.
Are you still questioning your relationship with alcohol? Check out Magz Shores’ post on “The Definition of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD)”, on her blog SoberCourage.com.
