Diagnosing your drinking problem

So some people that are having problems with alcohol are not actually experiencing full blown alcohol addiction.  Instead, what they are doing could be referred to as abusing alcohol.  For example, some college students might engage in heavy binge drinking and thus look like they are true alcoholics, but in fact they are just abusing alcohol as a temporary thing.

This can become quite confusing because some alcoholics are binge drinkers and can go for somewhat long periods of time without drinking anything at all, yet they are still alcoholic.  The fact is that every time they get into trouble, it is because they have been drinking.  Thus the signs of a drinking problem can best be observed over a long period of time.

So how can we tell the difference between someone who is abusing alcohol and someone who is truly an alcoholic?  Let me suggest the following 3 ideas.

1) The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous suggests that you go to a bar and try some controlled drinking.  This could be a useful experiment if you take it seriously enough and actually try to control your intake.  If you can do this several times then perhaps you are not an alcoholic.

2) Try a 30 day trial of not drinking any alcohol whatsoever.  This will open your eyes as well, especially if you simply cannot do it.

3) Try a 30 day trial where you limit yourself to 1 drink per day, max.  This will also open your eyes if you happen to go over your limit.

It’s pretty obvious if you are an alcoholic with these experiments as long as you are genuinely trying to accomplish them.  If you cop out and say that you “didn’t really want to stop drinking” right now they you are fooling yourself and you are in denial.

This is the whole thing: the alcoholic will always claim that they could stop, if only they truly wanted to.  But, you see, they just don’t want to.  This sounds like the argument of a 3 year old and that is because it is flat out denial.

Action to take if your drinking problem is alcohol addiction

So if it turns out that your drinking problem was merely alcohol abuse, then you could just simply cut down on the drinking or walk away from it entirely without consequence.  If that is not possible then you have a serious addiction to alcohol and must treat it as such.

If that is the case then here is what I recommend that you do.

1) Make a decision – I’m not sure if you can actually make the decision to stop drinking if you have not hit bottom yet.  This is not yet clear to me and it may never be.  I think you have to either hit bottom or be blessed from above in order to stop, I really do.  Otherwise it just seems like your efforts are wasted and you will relapse very quickly.

What make this even more convincing is that every single recovering alcoholic will agree with this logic.  Every single one of them.  They will all state that you have to make a firm decision and truly surrender.

Not an easy thing to do.  Not something that comes lightly at all.

2) Ask for help - now after you have surrendered the key is to take action.  That means that you need to ask for help.  Why?  Because you cannot quit on your own.  If you could, then it would not be alcoholism and you would only have a drinking problem, not an alcohol addiction.

When you ask for help, it doesn’t really matter who you ask or where you go, as long as you are serious about wanting to get sober.  It is possible that you will strike out at first but if you stay persistent with this then you will eventually find the help you need.

3) Get to treatment – the most concentrated form of help for alcohol addiction is going to be inpatient treatment.  This can be expensive but sometimes you can get funding for it through a grant of some sort and it turns out to be cheap or even free.  It pays to call local treatment centers and ask around.

Treatment is not a magic bullet but it is certainly a step in the right direction because it can give you such a huge head start in getting sober.  Not only are you detoxified in a safe environment, but you are also hooked up with other peers who are going through the same thing you are.  In other words, there is a ton of support and resources regarding drinking problems.

Living in long term sobriety

The key in long term recovery is to beat complacency.  This is absolutely critical because after you have made it through the challenges of early recovery and managed to string together some clean time, the only threat you have remaining to you is stagnation.

That’s right, after you figure out how to stay clean and sober in the first year or two, the only thing left to do is to keep pushing yourself to grow further.  If you don’t do this then eventually you will revert back to your old thinking and run the risk of relapse.

So how can you prevent complacency from setting in?  How can you stimulate yourself to grow continuously?  The key is in creation.

When you create a new life for yourself, you do so according to your passion and purpose.  This is important because if you do not find things that excite you in recovery then you will get bored and stagnate.  The goal is to keep things exciting and continue to grow.  You have to create this energy and momentum yourself.

One way to do this is to find a meaningful way to reach out and help other recovering alcoholics.  If you can do this then you will have purpose in your life and thus have a huge amount of built-in protection against relapse.  Working with others in recovery strengthens our own sobriety immeasurably.

So that is my basic guide for you if you have a drinking problem.  Make sure to leave a comment if  you are struggling with something in particular and I will answer it as best I can…..