Old 03-15-2011, 05:52 PM
  # 18 (permalink)  
Stevie1
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: SE Michigan
Posts: 1,066
Hmmm.
On the one hand you say it's causing no damage, but you list a lot of things in your few post that sound like damage - or at least classic alcoholic stuff. I also very cleverly intellectualised my behaviour.

I'm 53. For the first twenty or so years of my drinking and drug-taking, I was active, successful, total party girl, started a couple of businesses, bout a couple of houses, travelled all over the world, got a couple of degrees, blah blah. No problems here! No legal ramifications (God, was I lucky), no waking up in gutters or strange places (that came later), no failed marriages or relationships (that came later too), liver function tests good, always absolutely healthy as a horse, never sick.

Remember, alcoholism is progressive for many people. The last 15 years, a lot of that has caught up to me.
Had I quit drinking when I was much younger, I'd be in a very different place now.

Is it OK to carry on the way you are now until something bad happens - is that like asking, is it OK to smoke until I get lung cancer, then quit? I dunno...that was one of my rationalizations too. I can't be that bad off! I haven't hit bottom or killed anyone yet! It's not time to quit yet!

BTW I am the same sort of drinker my father was, quite "functional". My father was a biker, hiker, tennis player, very active and healthy despite the drinking (he even quit smoking at 40.) By his mid-late 50s, his considerable intellect was waning noticeably. Drinking cost him his marriage to my mother. At 61 or 62, he was operated on for normal pressure hydrocephalus, drinking probably the cause according to his surgeon. At 64 he died of liver cancer.

I think it is great you are asking these questions now, good for you. The decision about whether you're an alcoholic or whether you ought to quit is yours alone, though.
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