Originally Posted by
Seared 
I know I have a problem, but I can't make myself stop. Why don't I want it bad enough? Do I need to hit bottom? I already go to an outpatient center twice a week (but I still binge) and one of the counselors there told me I am too smart for my own good. I can pull lots of things off and not get caught. Thus, few consequences = no bottom. My grandfather didn't have a bottom either, he died of an alcohol related heart attack at the age of 55. I wish I were dumber so I could hit my bottom faster.
Consequences will catch up to you regardless of your level of intelligence. Your grandfather's heart attack is one example. This dis-ease is progressive and eventually your body will waste from ingesting such poison regularly. If you need to see this first hand, don't wait until it happens to you, go and find a hospice currently caring for an end stage alcoholic. Seriously, do it. Watch as that person bleeds from every orifice, literally sweating blood, unable to have pain relief because his/her liver/pancreas/kidneys can no longer accept pain medication. Watch them die horribly, perhaps that will be something that can appeal to your intellect.
The condition of alcoholism has precious little to do with how smart you are, or think you are. 'Smart' alcoholics die with the same regularity as stupid ones. And just so you know, my IQ was documented at 148 in my 20's, yet I bottomed out at 43 having spent my life doing the stupidest things possible, all thanks to booze. In the end, I was about as dumb as a box of rocks regardless of the consequences I thought I'd avoided and how many people I thought I had duped.
"Do I need to hit a bottom"? No, you don't. IF you are really serious about not drinking and truly understand you are being progressively, negatively affected by your drinking, it's a matter of what lengths you are willing to travel in pursuit of ending the struggle. Bottom is not reached through consequences, IMO. Bottom is a state from which you realize you have no control over yourself and from which you are uniquely desperate and afraid of what you have become as a result of your drinking. That can happen without a wrecked car or a stay in ICU for liver failure. Hell, that can happen sitting at a desk writing a report. And as Dee mentioned, if you wait for a bottom, it might not be one you can come back from. There's plenty of smart alcoholics who end up with wet brain or die from acute liver failure, never having seen their bottom in time.
Maybe it's a question of how much insanity one can tolerate in order to continue living the lie. Apparently I had an extremely high tolerance for insanity, because it took a decade of worsening conditions, eventually almost dying in ICU 3 times in one night before I came to grips with my drinking.
That does not have to be your story.
One last thing, and you can take this to the bank. When the consequences do come, they come at lightning speed. It happens very quickly once you've passed a certain point. I spent a helluva long time not feeling the brunt of my problem, until one day it all crashed down around me so fast it felt like some sort of perpetual bad dream - one I had a real hard time waking from. Thankfully (or luckily) I got to wake from it with at least half of my IQ and health intact. You might not have that opportunity if you wait too long.