Hiya. Glad you're reading and posting. I ummmmed and ahhhhhed for ages about the nature of my problem with alcohol. I recognised it caused me problems but managed to hide most of these from the world. I drank with other people who drank like me, which normalised the drinking and I was very good at keeping up a facade of party girl / coping career woman, but inside I was a complete mess. It was listening to people speak at meetings that I finally realised that I was indeed an alcoholic. Listening to people who had felt like I felt. Who had thought like I was thinking. Who had struggled with the same feelings of not-enoughness, of feeling separate, and had the same restlessness, irritability and discontentment, and the same feelings of inadequacy one moment but contempt for others the next. I felt like I'd finally come home to a clan I'd never known. And it was such a relief and yet so scary at the same time that I wept at almost every meeting I went to for the first few weeks. No one else seemed to 'get it' though. Not my friends or partner or doctor - but then I was being slightly economical with the truth to some degree, as I didn't really feel that I could voice my thoughts and feelings to them for some reason. Weird huh.
Basically, if you think alcohol is causing you problems, try moderating. And if this is not possible then you may well need to stop drinking and start working a program of recovery. Perhaps one day you will identify as an alcoholic, perhaps not. But the first thing is to deal with the problematic drinking, regardless of what your counsellor or friends say. Maybe try talking to an addictions counsellor about it instead if possible, but I suspect that you can find out what you need to know by just trying to moderate. This is pretty much impossible for an alcoholic to do indefinitely and happily. The AA website also has a short questionnaire type thing on there that helps to think through whether we are alcoholic / have an issue with alcohol, and there are similar questionnaires elsewhere on the Internet. I tried loads of them before I was willing to accept that they might be right. Lol.
Wishing you all the best.
BB