# Admitted to my girlfriend that I am an alcoholic **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 22, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/admitted-to-my-girlfriend-that-i-am-an-alcoholic/597134 "2011-09-22T01:50:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/admitted-to-my-girlfriend-that-i-am-an-alcoholic/597134/21 "2011-09-22T21:33:16Z")
Agree that peer support is _huge_. Also agree that you have to “hit rock bottom” can be both a myth and an excuse - “I haven’t hit rock bottom yet, so I can keep on drinking!” Good friend of mine (almost died a few months ago, ascites, severe DTs, weeks in hospital for medical management then in psych,) recently got his 90 AA meetings in 90 days and is also seeing an addiction counselor. I am very proud of him. He’s a staunch agnostic, but managed to reword some of the religious aspects of AA to make it work for him. If AA doesn’t work, and RR seems a bit too anti-AA, another option is [Smart Recovery](http://www.smartrecovery.org/). Whichever route you take, good for you and good for your girlfriend for hanging with you. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/admitted-to-my-girlfriend-that-i-am-an-alcoholic/597134/22 "2011-09-22T23:42:10Z")
> [@Cyningablod](#): > > As many recovering and ex-addicts (myself among them) and addiction-medicine professionals will tell you, the “hitting rock bottom” thing is largely a myth, and a detrimental one, at that. It can easily perpetuate a mindset of “Well, I’m not divorced/in jail/dead yet…I can keep partying a little longer.” People do not _have_ to “hit rock bottom” before choosing to turn things around. Nor should they. You yourself are proof of that (as am I). We both recognized our problems and took appropriate steps to deal with them.\ This is a really good point. You know where you are, and you know where you’re going - you know that continuing to drink like you are now is not going to make your life better. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2011, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/admitted-to-my-girlfriend-that-i-am-an-alcoholic/597134/23 "2011-09-23T00:20:59Z")
> [@Cyningablod](#): > > As many recovering and ex-addicts (myself among them) and addiction-medicine professionals will tell you, the “hitting rock bottom” thing is largely a myth, and a detrimental one, at that. It can easily perpetuate a mindset of “Well, I’m not divorced/in jail/dead yet…I can keep partying a little longer.” People do not _have_ to “hit rock bottom” before choosing to turn things around. Well, what that really means is that everyone discovers “bottom” at different points in objective terms. What matters isn’t where the bottom is, but that one _perceives_ it as a bottom at all, and therefore wants to stop. For some people, the emptiness that **OneMissedPost** seems to feel could be sufficient to constitute a bottom, if he perceives it as one. Unfortunately, the partying that goes with drinking can hide that kind of emptiness. [QUOTE=Rilchiam] She can’t be with an alcoholic? If she’s so sensitive to alcoholism, why didn’t she figure out you have a problem without having to be told? [/quote] Some people subconsciously know their partner has a problem, but are too afraid to talk about it openly, for whatever reason. It’s almost as if they’re willing to live with it if that keeps the relationship “stable” in their eyes. For her, it might be just the word itself that she has difficulty with. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/admitted-to-my-girlfriend-that-i-am-an-alcoholic/597134.md?page=1)