Hello Aster.

As a "recovering alcoholic" (whatever that means), I can assure you that circumstances don't always tell the whole story. This is one of the lies that drinkers like to tell themselves. "I only drink beer", "only on the weekends", "only after work", "I can handle my beer", etc. I've heard them all because I've said them all myself.

No one can say just when that "line" is crossed from problem drinking to full blown alcoholism. It is perfectly human to look at the circumstances and say, "well A,B and C are under control so whats wrong with a twelve pack on the weekends"?

I certainly can't say whether one is better off than the other. If a person can't STOP, well thats a problem. If it affects their lives in other ways, (subtle undercurrents not easily seen from outside the family unit), this wouldn't be readily apparent.

Heck I would drink a fifth of vodka at night and still show up for work in the morning. Not every night but some nights. After all I was working right? Making good money, paying my bills going to school etc. etc. "Until that one day......"

14 drinks a week is the limit for borderline alcoholism. I have certainly known some that stayed well within this limit and didn't become alcoholics.

The insidiousness of this disease (I use that term very sparingly), is that by the time you're hooked you don't know it.

I'm not a teetotaler. I have no problem whatsoever with anyone else in this world that drinks on a regular basis. It doesn't bother me or make me want to go out and drink lol.

But since you felt a need to make a comparison between one and the other and post it here, it begs the question that maybe you have this nagging thought in the back of your mind somewhere. Not trying to speak for you. But you came all the way in here to post about how its not a problem for one but for the other. Thats curious to me.

Its about as close to playing with a loaded gun as you can get.

Mark.


(p.s. I was raised in a "church every Sunday" good praying Christian home too. Only recently here some 30 years later do I find out my father would come home drunk every night when we were really little and throw up, and his parents were alcoholics too but they sobered up in their 60's)

Dear Suzi,

Your daughter's boyfriend is a total
loser. If she stays with him, her
life is effectively over. She'll
spend her precious young years
catering to, and aploogizing for,
his addictions. I hope you can
convince her not to throw her life
away on some guy who's going to cut
and run on her, just like he did on
his first wives.

Good luck, Suzi!

Blessings,

Owen