Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful responses. Reading these inspires me further to be transparent about my drinking history with my medical providers in the future. I especially liked the comment that not doing so would defeat the purpose of my so-called holistic approach. It's interesting how the old habits of secrecy can be hard to shred even when I am otherwise very determined and motivated to turn my life around in many ways now, but glad I've made this post because it will help keep my awareness up in the future and prepare to my appointments differently. All this is also kinda weird, because I've worked in medical research, and often closely with various physicians, in my whole career - just another good example for how addiction can twist values and acts with no exemptions.
Other elements showing how alcoholism (and maybe psych feature that predispose to addiction) keeps us in a self-neglecting, self-destructive bubble: in spite of working for a large hospital system, with great insurance, and having easy access to some of the best providers in the country, the only kind of medical care I have kept up reasonably well most of my adult life is the dental. But even that had several years of break a while ago. Ironically, that wasn't even primarily inspired by a desire for health in the past, more vanity, and that I paid a lot of money especially on cosmetic procedures in the past and wanted to maintain the result in a good shape. I also probably have bad genetics for teeth knowing my parents, plus only learned to properly care for my mouth after I turned ~18, and then didn't have the funds to fix things properly until my mid-20s. Meaning that a lot of damage was done by a young age, so it's a life-long task to maintain the good restorative and cosmetic work.
Speaking of the dentist, I definitely experienced becoming less responsive to local anesthetics at the dentist. I had a good idea why that might be, especially because I never had similar high tolerance to dental anesthetics in my youth, before alcoholism. I have a good and empathetic dentist now and am in the middle of a treatment plan. Will mention the drinking history next time and ask his opinion on potential link to the high anesthetic tolerance. It'll be a bit challenging emotionally with this dentist as he is very friendly and tends to talk to me more like a medical colleague (we work for the same institution) than a patient, which I like of course, but the reality is that I am a patient and he is a provider. Will probably get a chance to observe if the tolerance decreased at all after a couple months sober as I'll have a procedure requiring locals in about 3 weeks. I did think about running into similar issues with more serious surgeries in the future - terrifying thought and most definitely don't want to experience that.
Thanks for all the shares and advice again. I'll do what y'all do and suggest in the future. I am actually not afraid of judgment in general and do not expect it in a medical setting - I know they have seen addictions of all kinds a million times and won't have misconceptions about it. I avoided it more in the past, I think, for the same reasons I was lying so long here on SR: didn't really want to give up my drinking. And during the times I thought I did, there was still mostly laziness and no real recovery action associated with it but made a whole world pretending, where revealing anything real would have interfered with that system of fake competence and success, primarily poking holes on my own walls and denial. I think avoiding being a patient in the medical system I have been part of as a professional (meaning I am a science person and respect that profession) was also a manifestation of either not wanting to change, or not wanting to feel vulnerable.
I easily recognized, with some delay, after my doctor appointment this week that I was still running on the same habit in the moment. Next time will prepare more for these appointments mentally, and then I think it will be easy to be transparent, because I don't actually feel ashamed at all now. A bit afraid of what we might find, but my desire for knowing and wanting to solve problems is much stronger now than any fear. Maintaining false images of success was apparently so important for me in the past - I think with a different approach and
effort now, I may actually achieve the competency and success I've wanted, probably much more easily.
After all this, I have booking a comprehensive physical with a primary care doctor on my schedule for today, so will get to it
now 