Hi Ethan. Does it sound familiar? Uh, hell yes it does. Your story is very similar to mine. I've never been arrested, I manage to get myself to work when I'm drinking, I try like hell to be a good person "in spite" of my drinking. I often felt hungover after everytime I drank. I would try and "power through them" and for the most part did. I too remember saying "just a few", then one after another the "few" was expanded. At the end of the night I almost always took a few pulls right out of the bottle to get a little more buzzed a little faster...
Ethan, I WAS / AM AN ALCOHOLIC. No matter how I want to trick myself, justify, compare myself to others, the bottom line I am alcoholic. I obess about alcohol (or used to I should say). I was either drinking, thinking of drinking, thinking of not drinking, or hungover every day of my life. On December 2nd last year (48 days ago) I had my last drink. That day was not unlike many other days. I was trying like hell to take care of my family and wanted to create a good night for everyone. I suggested we go out to dinner and we did just that. At dinner I ran into a guy whom I haven't seen since my disease of alcoholism really got into full swing. When I was talking to him all I heard in my head is "look how far you've fallen, you're a drunk, you're a phony, look how good he is and look how bad you are"... All of these self loathing thoughts were going on...
So what did I do? Like any self respecting alcoholic I was going to show him and everyone else that I didn't care. So, I started drinking whisky at 8pm. I had one, then another, then another, then some directly out of the bottle, then some more, and next thing I knew it was 3:30am. I remember thinking "how am I going to get my son to school tomorrow, since I'll probably be drunk in the morning (since it was 3 hours away and I was probably blowing a .3%....
I woke up and drove my beloved son to school still drunk from the night before. I was able to get him to school and got home safely. It was when I arrived at home that I said "THIS HAS TO STOP". I logged on to this site, I read through a lot of posts, and I got my ass to an AA meeting. I have not drank since.
All I can say is my life, without a doubt, is better now than it was when I was drinking. That doesn't mean that I don't think about alcohol and don't crave it... it simply means that I in no way think my life is less fufilled than when I was drinking. Quite the opposite really.
Just know that the "craving" is your disease telling you that you need a drink. That's what it does. My disease tries to convince me that I don't have a disease. That's the most perplexing aspect of it. I had to make a decision, am I an alcoholic. If that answer was yes, then I was faced with a choice. What to do? I could do nothing and continue on my road to misery and death, or I could chose to become part of recovery. For me that recovery process is AA first and then this site.
I wish you the best. Recovery is possible I believe for any of us. It takes rigerous honesty and action. Good intentions get us nowhere. I can't tell you how many times I wasn't going to drink at 9am and ended up drunk by 9pm. That is the disease of alcoholism. I have fought it my entire adult life. Not today, I have surrendered to it.