This is kind of hard for me, but I'm beginning to feel a bit of safety, warmth, compassion and understanding already from this group, so here I go with my story:
After taking early retirement from Lockheed at 55 yrs old, my dad became a hard core bar fly and I lost all respect for him. I had been living my whole life with my mother and hadn't really known him since their divorce when I was 14. My mom only drank socially (as far as I knew) yet would order me sloe gin fizzes on vacation when I was 12.
In my 20s I was very successful and would typically get promoted very quickly at every company I worked for. We would do happy hour all the time (this was in the 80s) but outside of a few too many hangovers, I don't remember it being a problem. I was reliable, held a good job and was responsible with my set income.
Then in the early 1990s my mother died suddenly from cancer. We were never very close but it affected me. All of a sudden, without her influence, I felt lost and didn't know what to do with myself.
I left my good paying job, with benefits, and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker. That was over 20 years ago and I've hardly made a dime doing it since. In the mid 1990s I decided that I would fund my own movie projects through exotic dancing. I do believe this is where my unhealthy alcohol issues began. I felt sexier, funnier, more entertaining when I drank and it was just more fun (this was a fully nude club, but there was no lap dancing or touching of any kind). But needless to say, my movie projects didn't get done. (more to come...)