I am an alcoholic. 

What a topic sentence. 

I am an alcoholic who works at a brewery. There have been better combos in life I’m sure. 

So there, I typed it. I don’t even know if I fully believe it yet, but I’m slowly becoming convinced of it. I’ve gathered a bunch of evidence that all seem to point towards it:

I can’t drink without hurting myself or someone else. 

I can’t drink without becoming a different person who forgets her true values.

I want to quit drinking but I haven’t.

I need to claim alcoholism because I want to be an alcoholic in recovery. I don’t know if I believe in labeling yourself all the time, but in this case it is an unfortunate necessity to achieve my goal. 

Maybe the reason I never really wanted to claim the term alcoholic was because I didn’t want to take away from other’s real problems with addiction. Families ripped apart, relationships ruined, careers destroyed. I didn’t feel like I deserved the title of Alcoholic, a title reserved only for the truest of addicts, because I’ve gotten lucky with never getting seriously hurt and I’ve been a smart little functional alcoholic. I think a lot of people will be surprised by this confession. Sure I have some alcoholic tendencies when I drink: driving under the influence, irrational arguments, a few instances of planning a suicide. But I wasn’t bad enough yet. 

Bad enough. What a term. I one time overheard two bums on the orange line talking about a friend who wasn’t even bad yet. He only did smack a few days a week and he hadn’t even OD’ed yet. By their estimation I don’t think he’d be bad enough until he was laying lifeless on the street and needed 7 shots of Narcan to bring him back to life. They laughed about how he wasn’t even bad yet as they stuck plastic straws into paper bags and snorted dope up their noses at 3pm on the orange line. 

But when will I be bad enough? How many more times will I have to apologize to those who I hurt before I’m bad enough? Will I be bad enough if I actually kill myself by drinking and go out without admitting that I might have a problem with alcohol? 

No. I have decided that I am bad enough. And it’s none of your business whether I’m right about it or not. 

It sounds so severe though, “Alcoholic.” Giving yourself a label seems like such a grave thing to do. Then I become one of the alcoholics of the world. It seems so irreversible and so consuming. 

But I think that once you give a name to the problem, it makes it so much easier to overcome. 

I think I have to give myself the label so that the next time I can’t stop drinking until I lose consciousness I can think to myself, “Hey, just remember, you’re an alcoholic!”

So that when I wake up depressed and anxious from the withdrawal symptoms, I can think about the reason for my physical ailments.

So that the next time I consider suicide when completely inebriated I can think to myself, “So yeah you’re definitely an alcoholic, and you shouldn’t be drinking.”

So that when I become cruel and closed off to those I love most when I’m intoxicated I can think to myself, “You can do better than this, you can battle with alcoholism and win next time.”

So that I can give myself an excuse not to drink. No one in their right mind would question why an alcoholic doesn’t drink.

So that when I want to drink, I will be able to recognize the alcoholic in me and be better prepared to refuse it. 

So there you go internet, you’re the first to hear it: I am an Alcoholic, at least according to me. 

Can I still go to AA now that I’m not anonymous anymore? lmao woops.