Internal negotiations

Denial is a pisser. Having acknowledged that I may have a problem, if I subsequently decide any of the following:

a. I don't actually have a problem, or
b. I have a problem, but I can solve it via controlled drinking rather than abstinence, or
c. this is all a bunch of melodramatic, navel-gazing hooey,

...then the standard-issue analysis of such thinking is that I am in denial. This according to the recovery industry, anyhow, which last time I checked has considerable financial and cultural incentives to persuade people that they are addicts.

Right. So.

I also know, however, that denial is a real and quite pernicious aspect of addictive thinking. I saw it in my dad. I think maybe I see it in my beloved A. Sometimes I can detect it in myself.

Sometimes, though--like last night, when I had a bit to drink (3) but didn't start till an all-2009-record-breaking 7 PM, nothing dramatic, no hangover, just a happy buzz during the hours before bedtime--I wonder how any given moderate drinker could tell the difference between engaging in denial and not actually having a serious problem. If I drank (could drink?) like that every day, without incidents of concern or what have you, would that mean I'm okay?

Yeah, I know. Three a day is still too much, especially for a woman, especially for a woman with depression and diabetes.

I've done at least forty-eleven questionnaires and assessments the past couple of weeks. Mostly they say I have a problem. Not just in terms of quantity; also in terms of my psychological and physical attachments to drinking.

So what then? Two per day? Would that be safe? Unaddicted? Undenying? Or do I have to zero out altogether to pass the test?

It seems, again according to the recovery industry, that in order to pass the test I have to basically not care much, one way or the other, about how much or when or even whether. And one thing I am not, where drinking is concerned, is apathetic.