Thanks everybody for your great advice and insight. SR; you never dissapoint!
I should probably have added that my anxiety on this issue is compounded heavily by our experiences with my late father.
He died a year ago from complications resulting from his own alcoholism. Over the 10 years leading up to his death, his condition took us all on a miserable journey as we (me, my brother and mother) strove to support him and look after him through one humiliating and dangerous outrage after another. As my own drinking began to take me over, the degradation of my own hypocrisy while dealing with him, the sheer guilt, almost finished me. With his death, it was like the brakes were released and what little restraint I had towards drinking vanished. I can't truly say it was grief alone, although I miss him terribly -I loved him so much; he was a good, gentle man destroyed by alcohol. I'm an alcoholic so it was probably down to the suddenly available time I had which I didn't while I was caring for him.
So you see, my trepidation towards recovery mostly stems from the fear and shame of putting my family, who has just started to come to terms with life without Dad, on the same painful treadmill all over again.
Yet, I know they'll support me unequivocably after they get over any shock (yeah right; so this twitching, paranoid, depressed and frail train-wreck of a son and brother and friend had a drink problem all along?! Who would've thunk?).
Ahhh to hell with it all. Done with this baggage.
'Sobriety is coming'