In my experience, and obviously this is purely anecdotal and not very useful, but it colors the way I view problem drinking. I've been sober some time now, and I was watching a movie where a character goes into a bar and orders a beer. I put myself in his shoes and my first thought was "how can I drink this quickly and order my next beer, without someone commenting"? When I see a slice of pizza, or a cigarette, or a cookie, my mind goes man, I want ONE of those. When I see alcohol, my mind goes man, I want FOUR of those. To start. Then four more. And probably four more after that. When I was trying to be "good", I would tell myself I can only have a 6-pack. So what I did was just started drinking later, and would pound the six beers over the course of maybe an hour, then go to sleep. There was never any middle ground. I was getting drunk, and I just can't see that ever changing, with the exception of taking something like naltrexone. It didn't matter if I had the most important day of my life the following day. Once that alcohol hit my bloodstream, I was going to drink to "completion", in other words, until all the alcohol was gone or until I was so drunk and tired that I could just pass out in bed.
