How It Was, What Happened, What It's Like Now.
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This week we ran a feature about how some women with drinking problems are turning to moderation, not sobriety. The piece generated a lot of conversation on our site and social media about alcoholism, recovery, and Alcoholics Anonymous. Here is one response to that piece. I know there are people who can control their alcohol intake. I’ve been to dinner with them. I’ve watched as they drank one glass of wine, maybe two, and then switched to water. I am not this type of drinker. I don’t even understand this type of drinker. If I have one drink, I will

I’m an Alcoholic. My first drink led to my first blackout. Alcohol took away the shyness, peralysing self-consciousness. It gave me a warm and happy new feeling that freed me up to do anything. I danced at parties, yelled in the street, sang on buses, hitch-hiked across London, talked to strangers, no fear of anything. I loved it. I thought it helped me to be the real me. I didn’t want to do anything that didn’t involve drinking: cinema – boring, walks – you must be joking! I learned early to have a few drinks from my mum’s cupboard before

Hello, I am a recovering alcoholic. I am one of the fortunate alcoholics who has lived to tell my story. But for the grace of God and the program of AA, I would have died. I started drinking at a very early age and was very popular with my high school crowd as “the life of the party”. I could always out drink everyone who I was with. What started out as fun ended in living hell. My drinking continued through high school and into business college and then into the first law office in which I worked. At that