Since alcoholism and how it affects ML'ers has come up a lot recently, I want to give you a little insight on how the "active" alcoholic thinks.
My drinking career was a relatively short one: I had my first black-out at 17 and I stopped drinking at 27. I was a sloppy, stupid, awkward drunk. I didn't drink daily. The stresses of my life as a young mother of 2 would get to me and I'd disappear for whatever reason and get shit-faced somewhere, then find myself getting into some kind of trouble or another. What was really scary was the black-outs. Hours of my life were wiped clean from my memory. One of my biggest fears is I would kill someone during a black-out and not even be aware of it. Quite frankly, it made no difference if I died--I just didn't want to take anyone else with me.
I hated myself so much. I couldn't control my drinking and what would happen once I picked up that first drink. I won't go into detail the things I did while I was drunk, but I will say that I kept hoping that somehow I could train myself to drink like a lady and not fall into yet another black-out. It never worked.
In closing, I knew I was a effed-up mess, but I hid it behind this facade of false bravado--a devil-may-care attitude. It may have appeared to other people that I didn't care about what I did, but that was just a method of self preservation: because deep inside I cared a great deal--I cared so much I wanted to die.
"Why would you ruin perfectly good peanuts by adding candy corn? That's like saying hey, I have these awesome nachos, guess I better add some dryer lint." - Nonny