What makes an alcoholic?.....
You know that moment when you're drinking, and you get two or three into it, and you hit that level where you're just right? You slow down, or stop altogether, and keep that mellowness through the night?
I don't. I have never hit that moment, for me, when it hits my system I get an unsatiable craving for more and more until I either pass out or get arrested.
Being an alcoholic is a very personal definition, and everyone has a different bottom before they commit to the term. For me it's a three fold illness. I have an allergy of the body, the craving I spoke of above, where that point of "I'm good" never happens. I have an obsession of the mind, which when I'm not drinking, I compusively obsess about my next drink, to the point where I push the events of the last drunk (and the connected repurcussions and consequences) out of my head in favor of the promise of the sense of ease and comfort that the drink will instill in me. Thirdly, I have a sickness of the soul, a deep yearning for connection, a sense of terminal uniqueness that creates the mental obsession. No matter the amount of time I have sober, the groundwork for all three of these lies in me. That is to me what being an alcoholic means.