I'm not that bad YET. This is a progressive illness. It gets worse never better. People don't usually ask for help when things are getting better.
It progressed very quickly with me, but with others it is much slower. My mothers drinking went right out of control at the time I got sober. She's about 90 now and still a chronic alcoholic. She's been hammering it for forty years. There is nothing left of the human being that was my mother, just a seething pit of resentment. She's no end of trouble in the old folks home, the customer from hell. The only reason she hasn't died is that God doesn't want the aggravation.
When I got sober, she wasn't that bad. She still thinks it's everybody else's fault. She's had 40 years of miserable existence, most of it wanting to die. That's progression, not death but long term insanity.