Originally Posted by
AlcoholicOrNot 
Recently, I've realized (thru reading this forum and online research) that people who are in the "pool of alcoholics (85 - 100) DO NOT have willpower to stop drinking since for all intents and purposes, alcoholism is a disease and willpower alone will not cure the disease.
That's why for some, including myself, willpower works. I have not (yet anyway) contracted the disease of alcoholism and have in the process answered my username-implied question. I truly was not sure.
Nevertheless, if I continued to drink, I could easily move up a few spaces in the rating and then would be powerless once I entered the pool.
I hear plenty of ppl who say they "felt" alcoholic (looking back at it) from the first drink. I hear others (myself included) who drank quite socially and moderately for years......then all heII broke loose. At the end (for the last couple years), I was NOT able to stop or control it every time anymore. I was getting progressively worse, my drinking was getting more frequent, I consistently over-shot the mark I was looking for (how buzzed I planned to get), I'd "find myself" drinking almost like it was an out-of-body experience (not really but that's the best way I can describe it), I'd resolve over and over "not tonight Michael....prove it to yourself this ONE time" ...and I stick to quitting......up until I'd change my mind and decide tonight wasn't a good night to be proving it to myself (maybe within minutes of my resolution to stop).
The guilt and shame that followed was what did me in. I wanted to be able to control it soooooooo bad.......but my real life experience was that I never really did anymore. I had crossed that line somewhere in the previous several years and I couldn't go back. I either had to stop (which I knew I couldn't from past experience) or I'd absolutely drink myself to death.......guaranteed (although I wouldn't have agreed with that at the time.... I always held out hope that I'd get it reigned in someday). If I didn't die in the process of trying to control it.... and I couldn't get it under control......I was ready to just end the whole stupid game and off myself.
That's why you'll hear, typically from ppl in the AA crowd, that willpower may NOT work, give up on it, and consider what we did. For many of us, we tried that game and lost YEARS of our lives in that viscous circle of trying to stop/slow down and failing over and over. Ppl take it as being "negative" and "unsupportive" when the opposite is the reality.....it's meant to save someone else from losing as much time as we did fighting a losing battle and/or to save themselves from getting to the point where if they fail ONCE MORE, it's blow-yer-brains-out time.
The medical community admittedly knows very little about alcoholism so I don't get hung up on where I fall on the Jellinek Chart (even today, several years sober, the first thing I want to do is circle all the things that DIDN'T happen to me when I was drinking....lol), whether it's a disease because it meets the qualifications according to the AMA or whether that move was pressured by the insurance industry.......bla bla bla... it's all white noise and I don't care. I'm an alcoholic for the rest of my life and I can choose to live in the disease and die or I can stay involved in the only solution that works for an alcoholic of my type - a solution from a power greater than myself.
It's nobody's place to say where or what you are. Besides..... would it really matter anyway?
We all make and made our own calls along the way. Keep and eye on yourself and try to be more honest with yourself about this garbage than you've ever been before. Alcoholism is a nasssty way to die and it kills like it's nobody's business.