If you think you’re a high functioning alcoholic, I’d throw out there you can’t actually know that until you’ve been sober.

I thought I was a high functioning alcoholic. I felt I was justified in drinking because my life was difficult and I wasn’t that great a person, anyways. Since I’d always be poor, depressed, alone and kind of a jerk, there was little reason for me not to drink.

Fast forward a few years sober in program and this seems like an almost laughable self-assessment. I was too young to know any other way of living and how much was actually within my reach. I have a white collar job and my own home now. Despite thinking of myself as a selfish and worthless person no one liked most of my life, I actually have helped pull people out of some pretty deep holes without even thinking much about it in the moment. I sometimes get calls or e-mails from people I haven’t heard back from in months asking for advice. I have friends for the first time in my life and mostly outside AA at that and I’d attribute it to striving to live AA principles.

Despite my self-assessment as high functioning, a lot of people would say I was a low bottom alcoholic and I’d agree now. I was homeless or almost homeless many times. My heroes were mostly people I now understand were further down the hole of alcoholism or active addiction of some kind. Some of the first people I talked to in the rooms when I came in that were similar to me are serving prison terms right now or dead. I’m generally talking about people who were in the back of the room, on a court card, stuck in their war stories and not working an active program. This is the first year of my life even after a few years sober that I don’t have a plan for if I get arrested or go to jail - because I don’t realistically need one anymore.

Alcoholism is incredibly serious and if you’re an alcoholic or even think you may be one, the disease doesn’t care if you’re high functioning or not. One DUI or CPS call and most people would face circumstances similar to what I’m describing. It is a disease that lies to you.