It’s a question every alcoholic asks himself, eventually: When did it really fall apart? When did social drinking become chronic drinking? When did a night at the bar with friends become a night at home with a bottle?

When did alcoholism become, well, alcoholism?

For me, the through-the-looking-glass moment came when I couldn’t stop thinking about it: about that first sip of that first drink, and the long slow tumble into the haze. That’s what alcoholism is, really: that obsessiveness, that compulsive need that won’t and can’t and doesn’t ever go away. Alcoholism is alcoholism when, and because, it haunts you. If you’ve been there, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

There’s nothing easy about alcohol rehab. The fight against alcoholism will rake you over the coals and back again…and I’d be lying if I told that getting sober is anything other than one mother of a fight. But seriously: What’s the alternative? Alcoholism? Thinking about booze twenty-four hours a day, before you drink and after you drink and of course most of all while you’re drinking? No thanks.

You can beat it, if you want to. That’s what someone told me on my first day of alcohol rehab, and that’s what got me through the darkest moments. You can beat it if you want to. Remember that, as you go forward: You can beat it. It’s not easy, it’s not certainly not fun…but, yes, You can.

If you want to.