Adrienne's Corner

Do I Have a Problem?

Esther had a great question. She asked how someone knows if they have a problem with alcohol. I would expand that to include any of the things that could be a problem in our life such as pornography, gambling, eating, shopping, or even a religous fervor expressed in an unhealthy manner.

Below is the "official" questionaire Alcoholic's Anonymous uses as a guide to help you think it through. This is a good way to address any issue in your life. You may just plug in a substitute for drinking.

As most of you know, I tend to "cut through the fluff" to get to the heart of an issue. For me the bottom line has always been this; Would a person who was drinking normally even ask themselves or someone else if they had a problem? Probably not. Both my husband and I have always said, "If you ask, you probably are." Simple!

I'm added comments in red that pertained to my own drinking.

1 - Have you ever decided to stop drinking for a week or so, but only lasted for a couple of days?Most of us in A.A. made all kinds of promises to ourselves and to our families. We could not keep them. Then we came to A.A. A.A. said: "Just try not to drink today." (If you do not drink today, you cannot get drunk today.)

There were long periods, sometimes years, in my life when I rarely drank at all. Alcoholism is a progressive disease and it was just marching right along whether I did, or did not, drink. And guess what? It's been progressing for the past almost 19 years. If I started drinking again, I would not be starting from where I left off 18 years ago. It would be at the level of having never stopped at all. Scary, huh?!

2 - Do you wish people would mind their own business about your drinking-- stop telling you what to do?In A.A. we do not tell anyone to do anything. We just talk about our own drinking, the trouble we got into, and how we stopped. We will be glad to help you, if you want us to.

Since my husband and I were both drinking we certainly didn't accuse each other. My Mom, who was in the program, died when I was 36 and there was no one else to question our drinking. I wouldn't have listened anyway.

3 - Have you ever switched from one kind of drink to another in the hope that this would keep you from getting drunk? We tried all kinds of ways. We made our drinks weak. Or just drank beer. Or we did not drink cocktails. Or only drank on weekends. You name it, we tried it. But if we drank anything with alcohol in it, we usually got drunk eventually.

I could tell so many funny stories about this issue. I remember switching glasses with each one getting progressively bigger. That way I could just "have one" . Of course that "one" martini was the size of a industrial mop pail. I was like many women who did not drink during the day, so my "drink" became a reward for working hard all day.

4 - Have you had to have an eye-opener upon awakening during the past year?Do you need a drink to get started, or to stop shaking? This is a pretty sure sign that you are not drinking "socially."

Bleh! Not on my radar.

5 - Do you envy people who can drink without getting into trouble?At one time or another, most of us have wondered why we were not like most people, who really can take it or leave it.

The words "having a drink" were not in our vocabulary. I never could understand someone having one drink. But that's ok, because they couldn't understand my need to have more than one. And the twain shall never meet - ever.

6 - Have you had problems connected with drinking during the past year? Be honest! Doctors say that if you have a problem with alcohol and keep on drinking, it will get worse -- never better. Eventually, you will die, or end up in an institution for the rest of your life. The only hope is to stop drinking.

My problems with alcohol were centered on defects of character. Through the grace of God I never ended up in jail, lost a job, or squished some innocent person on the highway. But I know absolutely that if I had continued to drink I would have died.


7 - Has your drinking caused trouble at home? Before we came into A.A., most of us said that it was the people or problems at home that made us drink. We could not see that our drinking just made everything worse. It never solved problems anywhere or anytime.

With two alcoholics drinking in the same home, things ran pretty smoothly. There were no children to warp and there was no problem that couldn't be solved with a few drinks. Right?

8 - Do you ever try to get "extra" drinks at a party because you do not get enough?Most of us used to have a "few" before we started out if we thought it was going to be that kind of party. And if drinks were not served fast enough, we would go some place else to get more.

We always had a few drinks before going out clubbing or to a party. Pretty soon you just don't go places where folks are drinking normally.

9 - Do you tell yourself you can stop drinking any time you want to, even though you keep getting drunk when you don't mean to? Many of us kidded ourselves into thinking that we drank because we wanted to. After we came into A.A., we found out that once we started to drink, we couldn't stop.

Well, that would be a big "Yes".

10 - Have you missed days of work or school because of drinking?Many of us admit now that we "called in sick" lots of times when the truth was that we were hung-over or on a drunk.

I never missed work because of drinking.

11 - Do you have "blackouts"? A "blackout" is when we have been drinking hours or days which we cannot remember. When we came to A.A., we found out that this is a pretty sure sign of alcoholic drinking.

My second blackout is what put me in A.A. For women, the downhill slide is fairly rapid when they reach the age of 40. I was 45 when I entered A.A.

12 - Have you ever felt that your life would be better if you did not drink?Many of us started to drink because drinking made life seem better, at least for a while. By the time we got into A.A., we felt trapped. We were drinking to live and living to drink. We were sick and tired of being sick and tired.

My goal was to be in an "altered state", as my husband calls it. I really didn't care if it was alcohol or a little yellow or blue pill. In an altered state, I could feel confident, smart, and just plain happy.


A.A. suggests that if you answered yes to 4 or more of those questions, you may have a problem. Thing is, I don't know too many active alcoholics who ever read the darn thing. They're too busy drinking.