How to Know if You are Suffering from Alcoholism

How can you know if you are an alcoholic?

To anyone who is not struggling with alcoholism, such a question might seem bizarre because they think the answer should be obvious. But it truly can be a baffling question, especially if you are the one who is caught up in the slippery slope of experiencing both fun times as well as some problems with your drinking.

In some cases, there are alcoholics who will go weeks or months at a time without drinking, but when they do drink, they tend to binge. This can be tough to determine, because a binge drinker will sometimes stay sober for long periods of time but always return to the chaos of drinking.  In such cases the person might not realize that they should in fact stop drinking.

So how can you tell?Here are some ways that you might go about learning more:

1) Try to control your alcohol intake. Set a limit on yourself that you can only have 1 drink per day, max. Keep this up for at least 12 months continuous.

2) Diagnosing yourself. This is the only path, really. Other people cannot tell you that you have alcoholism. You have to accept it for yourself. If you merely admit it this is not enough. You will need to come to full acceptance of your condition without any reservation about it.

3) Consider this statement: “I didn’t get into trouble every time I drank, but every time I got into trouble, I had been drinking.” Is this the case for you? If so then that is a huge indicator that you might be alcoholic.

4) Consider this statement: “When I control my drinking, I don’t have any fun. When I really enjoy my alcohol, I frequently will lose control of myself.” Another big warning flag if this is sounding like you.

So go through those suggestions and give them some thought. Make an effort to cut down drastically on the amount of liquor that you consume over about a six month time frame and notice how you feel about limiting your drinking.  If you come to the conclusion that something needs to change then you might want to start exploring how to stop drinking.