@justasking111 there are degrees of terrible, all the way down the slide to rock bottom. one person’s rock bottom is another’s typical weekend.
let me tell you about this alcoholic. i certainly was on facebook, and in family photos from weddings, christenings and birthday parties, because there was nothing i liked better than ‘legitimate’ drinking; where i could demonstrate how not-an-alcoholic i was because other people were as pissed/more pissed than me. nothing better than a roomful of desperately hungover people who had behaved badly the night before, where i could hide in plain sight.
but, that’s me. the attempt to keep on ‘socially’ drinking was so important to me, mainly because at that stage of my alcoholism it was only the booze that gave me the confidence to go out. later, it became the only thing to get me out of the house at all, regardless of where i was going (did i mention i detonated my career in the end?).
at the end of my drinking, i was way past caring about hiding booze or getting/staying drunk. i did go through a phase of it. some people do, some don’t. i know of a person who would stash booze behind the bins at the end of the street, and would sneak out of the house at 2am to get hammered whilst their partner slept. that person didn’t even pick up a drink until their 30s.
i first got pass-out drunk aged 8. by age 9, parents were buying me beer on a friday night. i had my first blackout at about 12. i didn’t manage to stay stopped until i was 41.
but. if you’d met me in the middle somewhere, i was gregarious, funny, generous...fun to be around, always great to socialise with.
my situation is extreme, to say the very least. i was raised by rich alcoholics - i would have been better off with wolves. but, do you see? alcoholics aren’t necessarily begging for cider, or puking on their MD’s shoes at a press night. they are ordinary people.
OP, i am in no way suggesting that you are an alcoholic. i am holding myself up as a regretful, guilt-ridden middle-aged woman who never expected any of this. luckily, my sobriety has repaired my relationship with my kid, and i will be forever grateful for that. my mother never tried to change for me, and that’s part of why i’m such a fuckup.
anyway, i wish you well. if you like a few drinks, but feel like things might be creeping a little, take action. i had to stop forever, which was shit because drink was all i had at the end. a couple of weeks off might let you see how you feel about your drinking without any pressure to make dramatic declarations of months-long or permanent sobriety.
christ, don’t i go on. sorry. do carry on.