I found this while browsing the Top posts. It resonated with me, maybe it will for you:

An alcoholic is characterized by how they react to alcohol, not by the type of bag around their bottles, or their tendency to embark on movie-cliche-drunk behavior, or the amount of cars they've wrecked, or marriages they've ruined, or jobs they've lost, or nights spent in jail or on a park bench, or amount they drink, or the amount of time they've been drinking, or anything else like that.

An alcoholic is someone who experiences a fundamentally different reaction to alcohol than your "normal, temperate" drinker. Once an alcoholic takes a drink, the phenomenon of craving is set off. A physical compulsion and mental obsession for more kicks in after the first drink / drug. An alcoholic is someone whose body and mind react to alcohol in a way that makes it hard or impossible to stop once they've started or stay stopped when they put it down.

This reaction to alcohol (and other mind altering drugs) is a fundamental part of the alcoholics mental and physical makeup. This phenomenon of craving does not disappear or fade over time. It doesn't go away if we go to detox or dry out for X number of days / weeks / months / years. It doesn't change if we switch up the type of booze we drink or the places we drink in or people we drink with. It doesn't go away if we start exercising or seeing a counselor or getting in touch with our inner feelings. It doesn't go away because we've finally gained the self knowledge to realize alcohol is causing us harm. The only defense we have against the power of the phenomenon of craving, and the way our bodies and minds react to alcohol, is to avoid puting the first drink or drug into our systems, one day at a time. By doing this, we are afforded a daily reprieve from the consequences booze has in store for us, and that's all we can ever ask for.

If you think all alcoholics are skid row bums or regularly embark on Hunter S. Thompson style escapades, go check out a few AA meetings in the wealthy part of your nearest city or it's affluent suburbs. And if you think you don't qualify as an alcoholic because your brain is running around in circles on overtime to come up with justifications and excuses and more palatable terms like "problem drinker", I've got news for you: Non-alcoholics don't spend any time at all wondering if they prefer the term "problem drinker" over "alcoholic." That kind of thinking is the mental part of your disease working its magic to push you back towards a drink because you were never really that bad.

Minimization, justification, denial - these are the mental tricks your alcoholism uses against you. Alcoholism may be the most insidious enemy you have yet faced, because it speaks to you in your own voice and thoughts. Your best defense against these kinds of mental stumbling blocks is to get honest and familiar with your own story. This is one of the biggest reasons why people in AA tell their story again and again, even after years of sobriety. By taking a good, long, hard look at our established track record with drugs and alcohol, and then getting honest about it to another sober alcoholic, we learn more about ourselves than we ever would mulling it over in our own head. Because that's where my alcoholism lives - in my head, in my thoughts - and if I give it a chance, it will quickly manipulate and justify my history of drinking into a convincing argument for that most dangerous lie: "I was never really that bad." If you have a proven track record of drugs and alcohol causing problems in your life, but are struggling to find reasons or ways to avoid the label of "alcoholic", that's the lie you need to be worried about. Because as soon as you start believing it, you're going to be drinking again. And if it wasn't "that bad" before, the progressive nature of alcoholism is sure to make all those "but I haven't done _______ yet"'s come true.

I'm Dave, and I am an alcoholic.