An alcoholic is either sober or he is drunk. If that doesn’t apply to your life then you have no problem with alcohol and none of this is germane to your life. People who drink in a normal fashion really don’t think about CONTROLING their drinking. There is nothing to control.
Plain and simple if alcohol is a interfering with your life and you find that your daily behavior is affected by its use, then you have a problem. Common sense dictates that if we have problems in our life we fix them. If I have a thorn in my foot and that thorn inhibits my ability to walk normally I am not going to wax philosophic about how many thorns constitute a problem, or if I can limp now and then by only having thorns on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Pull the thorn out with gloves, barehanded, or a pair of pliers, but if it is keeping you from walking with purpose and enjoyment by all means take the damn thing out.
This is a deadly serious subject for us alcoholics and I know I am one and if I had sat back and pontificated any longer than I did I would have been dead some 8 years ago. I was fortunate that I found a recovering alcoholic with 16 years of sobriety and asked him what he did. He told me and I have been doing the same things for these past few years. Total abstinence removed any alcohol problem since there was no longer any alcohol.
If you want to get sober ask a sober person how to get there. There seem to be an awful lot of spectators to sobriety but watching and conjecturing about how and when to get sober and actually getting sober can be the difference between life and death.
Jon