Short answer: yes.

Long answer: this is the question I get asked more than any other, and it's almost always whispered, in a DM, at the end of a call, after someone's already told me three other things first, like they're working up the courage.

"I'm not that bad though. Not like, rock bottom bad."

If that sentence has ever run through your head at 11pm with a glass in your hand, I want you to hear this clearly: you do not need to lose everything before you're allowed to change something.

It can be as simple as, alcohol isn’t working for you anymore.

Where this idea even comes from

We've been fed one story about drinking problems for decades. It's the film version, the empty bottles under the stairs, the lost job, the intervention, the dramatic "I'll never touch it again." It's Hollywood, and it's AA folklore, and it's the version your GP's leaflet probably shows too.

That story is true for some people. It is not the only story.

Most of the women I work with are nothing like th...