Am I an Alcoholic or Addict? Find the Answer to This Most Critical Question…

How Do You Come to the Realization -
the Clear Knowing,
the Conviction,
the Absolute Certainty –
that You’re an Alcoholic or an Addict?

Someone else thinking so will not move you into meaningful recovery.

You must make the discovery yourself.

But First, You Need to Know What an Alcoholic or Addict Is…

The book Alcoholics Anonymous, referred to as the “Big Book” in AA meetings around the world, defines alcoholics simply as “men and women who have lost the ability to control [their] drinking.”

No long, involved moral or medical or biological explanation. Just a simple statement of the experience – complete loss of control.

Not a loss of willpower to be regained with work; but a loss of control that never comes back.

“We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control.”

So, How Do You Find Out if You’re an Alcoholic or Addict?

A method to “quickly diagnose yourself” is suggested in the Big Book:

Step over to the nearest barroom and try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself about it.”

Fortunately, there are other methods available that don’t include the risk of a DWI or arrest for the sake of the test.

A few pages later in the Big Book another suggestion is given:

“If anyone questions whether he has entered this dangerous area, let him try leaving liquor alone for one year. If he is a real alcoholic and very far advanced, there is scant chance of success.”

A much safer method, but it takes a long time to get to the conclusion.

Proven Methods to Answer the Question – Am I an Alcoholic or Addict?

A good place to start is with the “Twelve Questions” pamphlet of A.A.

Working as honestly as you can through the questions will give you a survey of your condition in relation to your addiction.

Attend Twelve Step Meetings

With so many open A.A. meetings and Twelve Step meetings for other addictions available today, it’s fairly easy to attend several meetings a week for a few months.

In A.A., they suggest 90 meetings in 90 days. By attending numerous meetings, if you’re an alcoholic or addict you are quite apt to hear your very story in at least one meeting.

While your mind may successfully distinguish you from all the others, when you hear “your story” told by another addict, you’ll know your true condition.

One Small Chink in the Wall of Denial

Once a small “chink” in the wall of denial is made, then you can begin to see your loss of control over your drinking or drugging, or gambling, etc.

You begin to see that a growing portion or your life is organized around and directed toward the achievement of your addiction – to the detriment of your true self and your loved ones.

As you see again and again how the addiction was the cause or motivation for your poor behavior, you find yourself making the admission of powerlessness over your addiction that is required by the First Step in the Twelve Step program initially developed by A.A. and now used by numerous groups for recovery from various addictions.

In the experience of most addicts in Twelve Step recovery programs, it seems to be very important for progress and success that you yourself become absolutely convinced of your personal powerlessness in the face of your addiction.

As long as you have hope of another way out, you will try that other way. Only after you have lost all hope, are you at the starting position for the Twelve Step program.