Originally Posted by
MrSmith 
What started out many years ago as a simple way to deal with stress for me ended up with me being physiologically and emotionally addicted to booze.
...You have to keep your guard up because when your sister is drunk, she is a different person who would most likely not stop for anything to get a drink.
Part of the problem is that I don't know when that transition took place for her. Twenty years ago I was staying over at her place and she drank a little too much one of the nights and didn't remember the end of our discussion the next morning. She did the same once before that while home for the holidays.
But a few years later I lived with her for six months and then in the same city for another 2+ years, and I never saw any sign of her getting drunk. Were the earlier blackout incidents more than a couple of "young and dumb" mistakes? There was a specific event this time that set it off in the current spiral, but it's apparently been bad (at least to mom's knowledge) for a few years now.
Has she been just recently getting worse? Has it come and gone in severity over the years? Or has it always been a problem and I was just oblivious? The few times (back when) when I know I saw her drunk she seemed the same to me, just over-relaxed and unfocused.
Is she just a "different person when she drinks" now? I haven't (at least to my knowledge) seen her drunk in 20 years now. If she was a different person drunk back then, then I've never known anything else.
(No, I don't expect you to know the answers. This is just what has me so confused at the moment.)
Thanks for the reply.