The Dishonest Alcoholic

My name is Chris and I am an alcoholic. I never set out to be and I never envisioned that this would be my path, yet here i am writing an article for Share.

When I started going to AA meetings I heard a lot of stories about people who drank alcoholically from an early age; that wasn’t me, for the most part up until my late thirties I could drink normally and even had a heathy respect for alcohol, a couple of bad nights in my younger years unstilled that in me. Weekends were a shared bottle of wine or G&Ts with my wife and that was about it.
I had always however been an over-thinker, or maybe better put a constant thinker, there was always something or things swirling around or popping in and out, whether that be family, money, work or such or some of everything.

In my late thirties, one day work I decided I would have a drink at home making dinner, whilst my wife was seeing to her horses. On the face of it innocent enough as plenty of people do, but I hid it and didn’t tell her. It was occasionally at first but became more frequent, with the quantity started increasing as well. By this time I was under no illusion that what I was doing was wrong, not just the quantity and frequency but the manner that I was going about it and the deception involved, yet I couldn’t seem to stop.

All this time I was playing a game of how much could I take and not be caught, I was what you might call a functioning alcoholic. It became like a science experiment, pre-mixing the drink (usually Gin in cordial) to achieve my goal, but the ‘experiment’ progressed and the alcohol ratio increased. Inevitably the question was asked ‘Have you had a drink?’, to which the answer was of course ‘No’. I initially blamed the suspicions on tiredness or similar and I got away with it, but each time got trickier to explain away.

As I should have been foreseen, the experiments went wrong and I still tried to deny it even though it was obvious. That was part of the problem, the blatant dishonesty, which for my wife was a massive red flag due to issues that can’t be discussed here. So I would promise to stop and it would be achievable for a while, but I would always pick up again. My consequences were tame compared to a lot of alcoholics, but as with most others, I thought willpower alone would be enough, which of course it wasn’t.

It got to the point of an ultimatum, I was told to get help or get out, she had already drawn up a schedule of how we might split the responsibility of looking after the children, with limited access for me due to not being able to trust if and when i was taking a drink. By this time I had considered the fact that I actually was an alcoholic and I should seek AA, but I was torn between my perceived stigma of being labelled an alcoholic, and the thought that if we split, I would be free to drink without repose. I did reach out, not to AA but a charity that helped reduce intake rather than abstain, which didn’t actually help in the slightest.

What did work (for a while) was a Breathalyzer I was made to use daily, and for a month or so it stopped the physical act of drinking, but not the alcoholic thinking. I started to scheme about how I could beat the Breathalyzer. To start with it was sneaking the drink after the test, but more akin to the alcoholic mind, it morphed into how and when I could drink beforehand to still blow negative at the allotted test time (6pm). It wasn’t long before I was requested to take a later test and clearly failed spectacularly – yet madly I still tried to deny it by blaming the calibration of the unit!

At this point the realization that I had to truly get help dawned, so I reached out to AA and found a local meeting. It was nothing like I expected, I almost turned away as I thought I had walked into a birthday or wedding celebration, with people dressed up, happy and welcoming. That actually wasn’t far from the truth, as what I heard were shares celebrating the metamorphosis of what people had been like, what happened and where they are now. Thankfully I was told to listen to the similarities and not the differences – I recognized that although I didn’t drink to blackout or had to ‘finish the job’ like many of the sharers spoke of, I couldn’t not pick up the first drink, accompanied by a mental turmoil focused around alcohol to the detriment of (almost) everything else, including my nearest and dearest.

So I got a Big Book and a Sponsor at my second meeting, who gave me a set of simple daily suggestions, which started my journey through the 12 Steps. Whilst in the beginning I struggled with the ‘God’ word, when the concept of a Higher Power ‘of my understanding’ finally clicked things started to fall into place. It quickly dawned that I hadn’t taken a drink or even felt the need for one. I will be the first to admit that I am by no means perfect in the consistency of undertaking the daily suggestions, but as long as I continue and attend meetings, the need to take a drink has never returned. I know I have the tools at my disposal to live the blessed (second) life that I have been fortunate enough to find through AA.

Chris W, Road To Recovery, Plymouth, March 2026