I am in my first year and even after 7 months, i still think the same thoughts as you. and i too believe i can snuff out anything that's harming me. everyone i met said it has nothing to do with amounts of booze or frequency but with this inability to control my drinking. now obviously someone in the earliest stage will have more manageability than someone at the advanced stage. like any disease, it gets worse with time. i come from a family of strong willed and pretty miserable alcoholics, many of whom white knuckled for years, suffering binges now and then and pulling themselves back from the brink. i can do the strong willed thing and stop after i get the buzz i need in order to function in my life. i can also stop for long periods of time even if i go nuts inside.
but what i can't do is STAY STOPPED. that's another part of it too. can i say to myself, ok, i'm done with this forever? no. i've done that when it comes to other things that hurt me--foods or activities or bad habits. initially, it's hard, but then it literally leaves me and i go on with my life. but i can't do that with booze. that's a key for me. the other thing: i spent a lot of time thinking about how to control it. so i would do research online and determine how many times and amounts i should drink per week so i could still do it but not increase tolerance. it took so much time and energy every day to work this out!
a friend kept saying to me, i don't ever do this. i don't even think about whether or not i have a problem. i can look forward to a glass of wine, drink two thirds of it and leave the rest. this is unimaginable to me!
keep hanging around here for a while. if you do have a problem, you could save yourself decades of pain by addressing it now. i kept looking for reasons why i did NOT have a problem instead of looking at why i did.
also, this is just me. but i found it helpful to forget about the label, alcoholic, and focus instead on the questions: Am i having trouble stopping and staying stopped? Do normal drinkers have this problem? What might the cost to me and my loved ones be if this is true and I keep going?
Welcome.
Zorah