I never experienced a “rock bottom” when I was drinking, but I still always had this nagging feeling that my alcohol use was an issue. I would frequently wonder if I had a problem of some sort, but as I looked at the people around me I found evidence everywhere that my drinking was “normal,” both in my personal life and in my full-time sales career, where alcohol was always available and somewhat encouraged. The apparent normalcy I observed around drinking made me feel validated enough to continue what I was doing. I didn’t understand at the time that our society’s black-and-white tendency to label people as either an “alcoholic” or a “normal drinker” didn’t come close to telling the whole story.

For a long time I felt stuck in a cycle. I would Google, “Am I an alcoholic?” to try to figure out what was happening to me. Since this was the only question I knew, the only solution that occurred to me at the time was to try Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Founded in 1935, AA has helped millions of people. I attended one meeting, but standing up and saying, “Hello, my name is Natalie and I am an alcoholic,” didn’t resonate with me. Was that even true? Sadly, I left that meeting even more convinced that I was not an alcoholic, and, again, concluded I must be a “normal” drinker. I stayed stuck in this cycle for years.