I think certainly many people who have a problem with alcohol know they have a problem with alcohol, yes.
I think there are lots of people who fall into a category of what we’d call ‘grey area drinkers’ - people who binge on the weekends but don’t drink at all in the week, but the weekend drinking leaves them riddled with anxiety and making promises that they’ll never drink again, etc.
I think these folks like to think that they don’t have a problem because they feel like they drink like everyone else does. Not every day. Not in the mornings. But they struggle to get through a Friday night at the pub without a drink more than a daily drinker would struggle to get through a day without alcohol.
I think there are lots of kinds of ‘dependent’ and it takes some people longer than others to get their heads around what’s normal and what’s not.
Deep down though, I think most people who are struggling with their drinking know it’s why they are struggling so much. They probably wouldn’t admit that to anyone else though. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t have a drinking problem questions if they have a drinking problem though - unless it’s a symptom of health anxiety.
I first went to AA 15 years before I stopped drinking, and had years in there of being a sort of ‘normal drinker’ who only drank on the weekends, never in the morning, etc. But I was definitely aware for a good bit of those 15 years that it was a problem.