George is an alcoholic, but he won’t admit it, and doesn’t think he needs to change.

The thought has occurred to him more than once that he might be an alcoholic. His first marriage ended in divorce because his wife finally got to the point where she refused to put up with his drunkenness every weekend.

She told George that she thought he needed help and suggested he find out about AA. Her suggestion just made George angry. “I’m no alcoholic,” he blustered. “I can take booze or leave it.”

“Then why don’t you leave it?”

George didn’t stay for an answer. He stalked out of the house and spent the rest of the evening in a bar.

I can take it or leave it. True, to a point. George seldom drinks during the week — maybe a beer or two after work, but that’s all.

He saves his real drinking for the weekends. Even then, he controls his drinking so that he can make it to work Monday morning-most of the time.

He often feels tired and shaky, but so does everyone else after a wild weekend. That doesn’t mean he’s an alcoholic.

In George’s mind, an alcoholic is someone who has to drink, a person really hooked on booze, who hides bottles and sees pink elephants and snakes, a bum who can’t hold a job. George isn’t like that at all.

He admits he does get pretty drunk at times. Nothing unusual about that — all of his friends are heavy drinkers. He’s blacked out a few times, driven home and not been able to recall how he got there. Twice, George has landed in jail on drunk driving charges.

One of the charges was reduced to reckless driving and he’d had to pay a large fine on his second DWI.

Still, he insists he always drives carefully, even after drinking. “I’ve never had an accident,” he boasts.

After his second conviction George told the judge, “I sure won’t let this happen again.”

But that’s what he said after his first arrest.

Denial Styles

What’s with George? A couple of things, both related to his most successful and most self-defeating defense: denial.

Denial takes two major forms; First, the alcoholic insists that he or she can drink like other people. Socially. Normally.

This means that there are always ready excuses for the exceptional times-for the fights, the arrests, the blackouts, the hangovers. It’s someone else’s fault. It’s harassment, bad luck, or just too much pressure.

Secondly, the alcoholic insists that he or she is different from “real” alcoholics. Drinking alcoholics are usually experts at picturing “real” alcoholics. They’re different somehow: jobless, homeless, friendless, and usually feeble-minded. Not like themselves at all.

That’s why you’ll find, if you look far enough, that the scotch and water alcoholic looks down on the beer alcoholic, who, in turn, is disgusted by the wino.

Each is convinced that he or she isn’t the “real” alcoholic.

George’s drinking pattern displays only one kind of alcoholic pattern. There are many others, and they overlap and shade into each other.

• The five o’clock alcoholic doesn’t take a drink until after work-never touches the stuff before five — then drinks continuously until passing out.
• The periodic (or binge) alcoholic can go for long stretches of time without touching a drop. Then comes a binge that can last days or weeks or months.
• The maintenance alcoholic finds ways to sip all day long, to keep just enough alcohol in the blood.

In short, there is no “typical” alcoholic that serves as a standard by which other alcoholics are measured.

The only thing they have in common is that, sooner or later, they all have serious life problems related to their drinking.