Am I really an alcoholic?

     I sit in meetings, as I have sat before, and listen to the speaker.  I listen to their drunkalog, their story of how they first came to drinking, how long they drank, and how it affected their lives.  I used to sit there and think, "Man, I do not belong here.  I never drove drunk, I never crashed a car, got into trouble with the law, lost my house, lost a spouse, lost a job, or had many of the bad results from being an alcoholic.  I never lost my license or freedom.  None of these things happened to me." Sometimes I'd thank God that this had never happened, but mostly I'd sit there and think to myself, "Am I really an alcoholic?"
      I honestly don't know how old I was when I first drank alcohol.  I remember being about 5 years old, I had a sister and a little brother, and my Dad would put beer in our sippy cups while he was watching us at night (while our Mother was working) so we would quiet down and go to sleep so he could drink and watch TV in peace. He drank Black Label, I remember those little brown bottles with the black and gold labels on them, looking like little beer barrels.  He would drink and smoke his cigarettes and watch TV and get us kids a little tipsy so we'd go to sleep soon.
     I remember being 7 or 8 years old, and him passing out one night - stone cold out.  Could not be roused.  My mother was at work, and my baby brother was crying very loudly because his diaper needed changing.  I remember I called my grandparents in Woronoco (about 20 minutes away) to please come over because I think there's something wrong with Daddy he won't wake up.  I stood out on the side of the road, watching for them, and when they got there and finally shook him awake, he was mad as hell at me for calling them.  I think that was the last time he used a paddle on me, he hit me so hard the skin on my butt split a bit and I bled.  It wasn't enough to sober him up, though.
     When I was 12, my Dad found A.A.  I don't know what drove him to get sober.  All I knew was that my Dad wanted to be my Dad, and he was trying his best to be the good man I believed he was.  He got sober, he got a year in, and then my mother threw him out.  He stayed sober, he worked very hard at maintaining a relationship with his children, and he moved on with his life.
     I didn't drink, I wasn't really interested in drinking all through high school. When I was 17, I had the opportunity to go to Germany for a month as an exchange student.  This was exciting, it was my senior year of high school, and I was very excited about going.  What I wasn't prepared for was the easy access to alcohol.  When we got to Germany, we ALL drank.  We went to bars and ordered drinks because we COULD.  We toured two breweries.  We drank with our host families.  We went out drinking when we visited Berlin.  We drank all the way down the Rhine on our way to the airport. 
     The one thing that I remember very clearly was my first black-out drunk.  It was on this trip.  One of the German exchange students was a movie star, and she was in her first movie and it premiered while we were there.  We were all, of course, invited to the party, and they served something called Erdbeerbowle.  For those who don't speak German, it's a punch bowl filled with champagne and fresh strawberries.  I drank one glass, to be polite, and then proceeded to eat two large cups filled with the strawberries from the punch.
    If you are unfamiliar with what simple sugar and alcohol does in the bloodstream, let me explain - Imagine your stomach is the door to a fabulous party in your bloodstream.  Along comes simple sugar, knocking at the door.
 "Hi, I'm simple sugar!  Can I come in?"
"Sure!", says your stomach, and it lets Simple Sugar into the bloodstream.
Alcohol, who's hanging out with Simple Sugar, waves from behind Simple Sugar and says, "Hey, I'm here with him.  Can I come in, too?"
"Sure!  Any friend of Simple Sugar is a friend of mine!" And in waltzes Alcohol, who proceeds to wreck the joint, go through your wallet, throw up in your aquarium, and leave the place a shambles.

I don't remember much of this party.  I know I got married to one of my male friends, by another male friend who had one of those fake Clergy certificates.  I sang some really raunchy songs in English, which I am embarrassed to admit.  Most of the grown ups didn't understand them, except for my teachers. (that went over well, I'm sure.)
     When I got back to the US, I graduated, spent the summer getting ready for college, and drank.  I got into terrific fights with my mother and eventually moved in with my father before I turned 18.  I still needed to get rides from my mother to get to college, since she was also going there.  I joined the drama club, and then my drinking really went out of control.  I did what I thought every college kid was entitled to do; I went to bars and lots of parties, got out of my mind drunk, and did things I would later regret.  I engaged in very risky sexual behavior.  I got stoned a couple of times, but pot wasn't my drug of choice.  My father wasn't happy with me, but my step-mother was very happy, because now she had a drinking and drugging buddy!  I remember my second black-out drunk was New Year's Eve, 1983.  My best friend and I had been out partying all night.  I passed out in the car at one point.  I passed out at a friend's apartment after that.  We made it back to my dad's place, and we crashed.
   I woke up in the morning with the room spinning.  My Dad came in and asked me how I was, in an unnecessarily loud voice.  I gurgled.  He asked me if the room was spinning.  I gurgled again.  He asked me if I felt like I was going to die.  I nodded carefully.  He shouted "You stupid little shit, that's what you get for drinking so much!  Don't do that again!" and slammed the door to my room.  When I woke up several hours later, I had NO hangover.  I was fine.  My Dad was mad as hell!
     I toned it down for a while, and then I had the chance to go back to Germany as an exchange student for a month, this time to Frankfort.  I actually spent a good deal of this trip sober, enjoying seeing the sights, and was invited to a lot of parties where I drank soda and behaved myself.  Up until the hotel in Kempten.  You see, I could speak German better than anyone else in the entire group, except for my teacher.  I wasn't making a lot of friends on this trip, in fact I didn't know anyone except for one boy from my class, and we weren't friends.  So when the trip to see the passion play in Oberammergau came up, I was very lonely.  I got a quart of Bacardi 151, a liter of Diet Coke, and a six pack of beer, and came to the hotel party.  I got very, very drunk.  I was drunk before dinner.  I remember dinner was Sauerbraten.  I got to revisit it several hours later.  I drank until the folks holding the party had to take me back to my room, and then they had to send my roommate up to have me NOT leaning out the window to talk to them.  She left, and I settled down for the night.  I blacked out, because there is not much I remember about the party.  There was a little part of my brain that was telling me I was poisoned and I needed to get this stuff OUT of my system by any means possible.  At some point, that part of my brain forced me into the bathroom, where I filled the sink with dinner and most of the contents of my stomach. (No, it never occurred to me to puke in the toilet.  It still rarely does.)  I tried to clean up the bathroom as much as possible. (Still had some functioning brain cells.)  I passed out, and apparently what didn't make it out the first time turned into vapor during the night and I stank up the room something awful!
     The next day we drove down to see the Passion Play.  I had a bottle of seltzer water.  Every time I took a sip, I got drunk. (It was just water, I checked.)  I drank orange juice.  It didn't help.  I couldn't feel my face at all.  I spent the most of the day not being able to feel my face (I scratched myself pretty good because I had an itchy nose and couldn't feel it when I scratched it.)  I got some food and hot cocoa into me at lunch time, and felt a little better by dinner time.  No one gave me back the other half of the six pack.  I was good with that.
     When I got back home, I ended up moving in with a couple of friends from college.  This turned out to be a colossal mistake.  I was going to school full time and working two jobs.  I never had time to buy food, so I would give my roommates money and say, "please buy food for the house."  Never saw much food, but saw a TON of booze.  Did a lot of drinking, partying, and ended up doing coke the only time I ever did it.  Then I got sick of this crap with them having people over all the time and not being able to study, so I moved back in with my mom for the last semester of my associates degree.  I didn't do much drinking, I studied, got a good GPA, and graduated.
   I got sober for the first time in 1986.  I was in Ohio, where I had gone to Kent State to get married. (Don't ask.)  Things Went South.  I started getting meetings, got a sponsor, was working through the steps when I did one of the things you aren't supposed to do in your first year - I made the decision to move back home to Massachusetts.  My parents were putting a lot of pressure on me to come back home, they made lots of promises they had no intention of keeping once I got home.  My sister had gotten married and already had a baby, and I was a lost soul.  So I came home, and managed to stay sober for another month until I gave in to the voices of my friends who said, "You are not an alcoholic!  I drink WAY more than you do!"
   Yeah.  This is the refrain that I kept hearing for the next 25 years.  "You're not an alcoholic because..."
"You're just a binge drinker."
"You don't drink EVERY day."
"You haven't had any DUI's or trouble with the law."
"You're functional."
Folks, I am an alcoholic.  I can not, under my own power, stop drinking once I start.  Oh, I can go months and years without a drunk or a blackout, but I can not consume alcohol without having it affect me and who I am.  I will lie about how much I've had to drink.  I will sneak drinks.  I will justify why I should be allowed to drink.  I will play games with my drinking (I can have two beers or glasses of wine, and no more.  No hard liquor and I can NOT drink Sake!) and try to control it or make bargains with it.  Sooner or later, the binge comes.  Sooner or later, that binge is going to be the one I die from.  Or the one where I do decide I need to drive somewhere, and kill someone or hurt someone or just get my very first DUI.  Sooner or later it will affect my behavior enough that I will either lose my job or walk away from it because I can't stand it anymore.  Just because it hasn't happened YET, doesn't mean it won't EVER happen.
It's not the quantity I drink.  It's not the time span that falls between drinks.  It's the fact that I am not normal, I have never been normal, and I do not know what a normal relationship with alcohol is, that makes me an alcoholic.