Oh, Yes, I can relate to the lying thing! It seems that the farther the alcoholic gets into the disease....the worse the lying gets.....
This is my take on some aspects of the "lying"---While it seems obvious that some of the lying is to cover their tracks and protect them selves from discovery or wrath....I think---especially in the latter stages---that a lot of it is CONFABULATION.....making up the "missing parts"....
Like...with very small children...when trying to flesh out a story when they really do no know certain things....
Or...like, after a stroke or some other brain pathology.....
The heavy drinking alcoholic DOES function with lots of blank spaces in their memory....and it does get worse over time....
so, I theorize that they make up the missing parts...and, throw in a little imagination, while they are at it.....
Example...I recently had a woman, that I have known for years, in my community, tell me...straight faced, that she and her ex were married for seven years...and she had known him for 13yrs. Actually, she was ;married for four years and had known him for a total of six!! (I was at the damn wedding and she come to my house and cried, loudly, on my shoulder about the divorce).
I happen to know that she is a closet drinker for many years....
I know another woman who was spiraling very fast into the latter stages...who went form telling about her father cooking turkeys for the whole community o n Thanksgiving....It went from two or three turkeys to about 12 tu rkeys, as she repeated the story over the years.....
It seems that they will take a grain of truth (possibly)....and make up the rest as they would like it to be.....
I , also, wonder if it might be, also, a regression in behavior.....After all, we teach children that they have to Learn to tell events ACCURATELY...and that, not to do so is wrong---in other words, a lie.
So, I theorize, as the brain function is progressively diminished in function, due to the effects of the alcohol (especially the frontal lobes)....the early learning to tell the accurate truth, falls to the wayside.....
In further support of this "dandylion theory"....they seem mistyfied and defensive when it has been pointed out that they seem to have a strange relationship with the TRUTH.......
In further support of the theory....this feature of "lying" seems to be sooo universal to all alcoholics as they progress in their drinking.....
In Summary--- alcoholic lying seems, to me, to be a haphazard mixture of
personal Protection, Confabulation, and Imagination......