Am I an Alcoholic? 10 Questions That Could Change Your Life

Have you ever wondered, “Am I an alcoholic?” It’s one of the most searched questions about alcohol, and in this episode of The Successful Life Podcast, Corey Berrier shares his personal experience with alcoholism and recovery while walking through 10 honest questions that many people ask themselves before getting sober.

This isn’t a diagnosis or medical advice—it’s an opportunity for honest self-reflection.

Corey discusses common warning signs of alcohol addiction, including trying to control drinking, planning life around alcohol, damaged relationships, hiding alcohol use, increasing tolerance, legal and financial consequences, and drinking to escape stress, anxiety, or emotional pain.

He also explains why simply quitting drinking isn’t always enough. Real recovery often requires addressing the underlying emotional, spiritual, and personal issues that keep people trapped. Corey shares how the 12 Steps, asking for help, and focusing on helping others transformed his life beyond just putting down alcohol.

If you or someone you love is questioning their relationship with alcohol, this episode offers hope, practical insight, and a reminder that lasting recovery is possible.

In This Episode

• 10 questions to help evaluate your relationship with alcohol
• Common signs of alcohol dependence
• Why do people drink to change how they feel
• Alcohol, dopamine, cravings, and addiction
• How alcoholism impacts family, work, finances, and health
• Why willpower alone often isn’t enough
• The importance of detox and asking for help
• Recovery through the 12 Steps 
• Finding freedom from the bondage of self
• Hope for anyone struggling with addiction

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:31

Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Berrier. And today's topic is Am I an alcoholic? Hard for me to say whether you're an alcoholic or whether you're not an alcoholic. I'm not really I'm not really qualified to determine that for you. Obviously, I am an alcoholic. And some of the questions that I've heard over the years that people have asked themselves, here's I'm going to give you 10 examples of some questions that maybe if you are an alcoholic, or maybe you're not an alcoholic, you've asked yourself some of these questions. The first one is have you ever tried to cut back from drinking and just found that you couldn't do it? If yeah, so I would just ask yourself if you've ever tried to cut back and uh and it wasn't really what you thought it was gonna be. For me, when I drive when I drank, I spent a lot of time, I spent a lot of time planning my day, my week, my weekend, my weekdays, my mornings, my nights, my whatever around drinking. Have you ever found yourself planning your day around whether you could drink or not? I remember, you know, I remember back in the day that if they didn't serve alcohol where I was going for lunch, I'm not going to lunch there. So have you ever thought about, have you ever said tonight I'm gonna go out with the boys? I'm gonna have one or two drinks, and I'm gonna head home. And then you wound up drinking significantly more than one or two drinks? That would be a fair question to ask yourself. Has drinking ever caused problems in your relationships? Now, that could be personal relationships, that could be work relationships, that could be any relationship. Has alcohol ever gotten between you and another relationship? For me, God almighty, it destroyed relationships. And it was really subtle at first because I was so egotistical that I wasn't able to even see how I was affecting other people. And that happens a lot with alcoholics. We are self-centered human beings typically, and we don't really recognize the damage that we're doing to our families, our loved ones, or wives, or kids until the damage is already done. And then there's times when we lose those people and they lose trust in us, and it takes a long time to get that trust back. The only way I've found to do that is to get sober. And so that'd be a great question to ask yourself. Has drinking ever caused arguments? Have you done something that you wouldn't normally do while you were drinking that disrupted a relationship? Have you ever missed work because you got hammered the night before and you just couldn't make it in? Have you ever neglected responsibilities because of alcohol? Have you ever not paid a bill? Have you ever been late for something?

Speaker 4:01

Have you ever just showed up drunk or any of those things?

Speaker 1 4:11

You know, one of the biggest things for me is I drank to change the way I felt. Have you ever drank to to change the way you feel? For the true alcoholic. We do drink for the feeling, but then something happens. Something happens where that good, warm, fuzzy feeling of that alcohol going down your throat changes. And then it it stops working. At least for my life, in my life, that's what happened. And I don't know about for you if that's ever happened. But uh if you drink to change the way you feel, and a lot of times, I'm gonna get into this in a minute, but a lot of times people they have one or two drinks at night to change the way they feel because they're stressed out, they've had a tough day, or fill in the blank. Anxiety, stress, boredom, pain. Alcohol is a solution for those things until it's not. You know, have you ever hidden your drinking and lied about it? I know I certainly did. I didn't want people to know how much I drank because it was embarrassing. Unless, of course, you were a fellow alcoholic that drank with me and then it didn't matter. And I surrounded myself with people that, you know, that that drank like me. I didn't really hang out with people that didn't drink like me because I didn't want to try to put on one of those masks and act like I wasn't the person that I was. Even though I would put on those masks, don't get me wrong. There's sometimes there's health issues that come along with drinking. And if you're a real alcoholic, sometimes those health issues don't matter. Maybe you got blood work back and your liver enzymes are really high due to drinking. And you might lie to yourself and say that's another reason, but the truth of the matter is if you're drinking pretty heavily, you could have liver problems. And I've sponsored guys that have had liver failure and have waited on a list or couldn't let me rephrase that, tried to get on a list, but couldn't stop drinking. And with a with liver transplant, you got to be sober six months before they'll even put you on the list. So your life is at stake. You're you could die, and uh sometimes that's just not good enough for people to stop. You know, has it ever caused you any financial problems, legal problems, DUIs? Have you ever gotten to a fight in a bar because you were drunk? Or cause problems in your family? These are all common things that that happen to people who become addicted to alcohol. What about your tolerance? When I first started drinking, God a hundred years ago, my tolerance wasn't very high. But then I maintained that or increased that intolerance, not intolerance, tolerance, increased that tolerance to where I could drink with the big boys, I could drink with the best. And that's not bragging by any stretch. That's a ridiculous thing to for somebody to even think about bragging about because it's not really that cool. Has anybody ever asked you to stop drinking completely? Have you ever tried that for say 90 days and couldn't complete it? Or maybe you did complete it, but you were completely miserable and you were counting every single day until that 90 days was up. I didn't go 90 days personally until I got sober. It just wasn't in the cards for me. I just wasn't interested in feeling the way I felt. So again, I can't answer whether you're an alcoholic or whether you're not an alcoholic. But what I can tell you, if you are an alcoholic, there is a solution to where you don't have to live like that anymore. That god-awful pull that you feel in the morning for a drink, or in the afternoon for a drink, or at night for a drink, can absolutely be smashed. And there is a way to do that. But you can't do it on your own. At least my experience has been I needed something bigger than me. Because my ego says, Corey, you can do it. You can do it. No problem, dude. You can do anything you want. That's what we were told as kids, right? You can grow up and be anything you want. Well, I can also be alcohol because I can do anything I want. Well, that's just a fallacy. That's just bullshit. It's not true. Not for most, anyway. Now, there are some people that can live a miserable life without drinking. But who the hell wants to do that? That doesn't, that's not appealing to me at all. But until you get into a program of recovery and get past that god-awful pull for alcohol, I'll give you another example if you've ever smoked cigarettes and stopped. That pull to smoke a cigarette is really strong. It's stronger than it's about it's about as strong as alcohol. It's very hard to quit smoking. And so that's the easiest way I can compare, or maybe an easier example would be if you're fat and you want to lose weight, but you can't stop eating donuts, you can't stop eating pastries at work, you can't stop eating garbage at lunch, garbage at night. Well, if you're eating a lot of sugar, which alcohol contains a lot of sugar, cigarettes contain sugar also, but we're not talking about cigarettes today. It's difficult to put that down. Sugar is one of the hardest things in the world to put to put down. And the reason why we encourage people coming in to recovery to make sure they're having enough sugar is because it counterbalances that pull for alcohol. It does something in that in your brain. It hits the same dopamine receptors as alcohol. Sugar does. So, uh in a simple example, if you've ever tried to stop eating sugar and you just couldn't, that's the same thing as alcoholism, except for you're probably not gonna, you're not gonna get a fat driving ticket. You're probably not gonna wreck a car because you're fat. But it's the same pull from the same receptors in the brain. And it's begging for you to give it that substance, whether it be sugar, whether it be alcohol, whether it be cigarettes or vape or whatever it is. And so if you've answered yes to any of these questions, then it might be something to look at. Again, I'm not here to tell you whether you're an alcoholic or not, but these questions are the some of the questions that people ask themselves before they decide to get sober. And maybe you've never asked yourself these questions, possibly. But now that you've listened to this, hopefully you will ask yourself these questions. And maybe you'll get to live a life that's free of alcohol. For years, I lived free of alcohol, but I wasn't completely free. I was still uh tied to my ego and my pride, and I got all the things that they tell you you're gonna get in the promises, but I wasn't very happy. I was always chasing the next thing, whether it be the next month, the next big deal, or whatever. And for me, living in the sort of freedom that I have today, that I don't have that pull for alcohol, and I don't have that massive ego that I used to have. Don't get me wrong, it still comes around. I don't know that you're ever free of that, but I'm as free as I've ever been from we call it that bondage of self, when you only think about yourself and you don't think about the people you're hurting. You don't think about the damage that you're causing in other people's lives. And I would ask you just to step back and think about that for a minute because it's painful for the family members that go through this. It's just as painful for them as it is for you. But I know you're not thinking about them if you're an alcoholic actively. You're thinking about yourself, you're thinking about how you're gonna feel the next day, you're thinking about the things that you've messed up. You're thinking about you. And when you're thinking about you, it's really hard to think about other people. And uh what I found in my own experience is when I think about others over myself, I have a better life, I have a more productive life, I'm happier, I'm freer. And this is not some cuckoo science, like this just works, and it works for hundreds of thousands of people across the country and in every other country on this planet. People wouldn't go sit in a church basement a few nights a week and be vulnerable if they didn't have to, but it is the freedom to alcohol, it is the freedom that you're probably suffering from right now if you are currently drinking. And look, again, you can even stop drinking and still be in the same amount of pain that you were in when you were drinking. And I know that sounds crazy. You may not have the pool of alcohol, but you've got yourself that you haven't dealt with yet. You've got all the wreckage of your past that you need to correct, or I had to correct, in order to be okay with me. Because those little things that pile up, the money you owe to the IRS, the money you owe to the bank, the money you're behind on, the money you got longed to from a friend that you didn't pay back, all those things compound into bigger problems. And it's hard for you to wreck, it's probably hard to recognize that when you're in it because they're such small things or they feel like small things. That compound effect doesn't seem so big and it weighs on you. It weighs on you in a way that you can't understand until you let that weight go. And when you let that weight go, your life changes. You know, and this thing ebbs and flows. There are times when I hang on to things that I shouldn't, relationships, friendships. There are times that I hang on to things that are not healthy for me until I finally pull my head out of my ass and recognize that it's hurting me worse than it's helping me. And I can't answer those questions for you. You may not be going through any of these things. And if you're not, probably you won't continue listening to this podcast because it is about being in recovery. It's about getting free from that life that seems impossible to get free of. I remember thinking to myself, I can't live with this and I can't live without it. My body says, I have to have it. My mind says I have to have it, but I don't want it. And it's a real tricky situation. It's a real, it's a real uh, it's a real fine line between happiness and torment. Now you can choose to live in either one of those, and it really makes no difference to me which one that you choose because it's not going to affect me. And I don't say that egotistically, I just say that from a standpoint of I am free, and I have had the ability now to see what this life is like without being tied to myself and without being stuck. And if you don't want to be stuck anymore, there's ways to not be stuck. But you're gonna have to get out of yourself, you are gonna have to go through the hard times of detoxing, and that's not easy. I'll be the first to tell you it's not fun, but I can tell you on the other side of that detoxing is freedom. Now, if that's something you're interested in, there are ways for you to get that. And you're welcome to reach out to me anytime, and I'm happy to tell you how I did that. So just go back through these questions and just ask yourself are these things that I've asked myself or should be asking myself? And uh if you need to go back through and listen to this again, by all means you should do that. It might be worth it. Maybe you know somebody else that's struggling with addiction, whether it be alcohol or drugs or whatever it might be, could be even food. Share this with them because fill in the blank with the substance that you're using, whether it be food to make yourself feel better, whether it be alcohol or whether it be drugs, you're in a cycle that's going to be hard to break on your own. In fact, I don't know how you break it on your own. I know some people do it, but for me, it's not possible. So I needed help. And for a guy like me to ask for help is very difficult. It's it was one of the hardest things that I had to do is ask someone for help. But I was in enough pain that I didn't want what I was continuing to get. I didn't want it. And if you don't want it, there's a way out. So I appreciate you guys listening. I hope, I hope this was beneficial, and if it wasn't, that's okay. But this is what was on my heart to talk about today, because there are a lot of people out there still sick and suffering inside the rooms and outside the rooms, and uh it sucks. It sucks. But when you decide to make that change, you can't just decide to stop drinking, you gotta take action. A decision's fine, except for a decision, you're gonna be stay, you're gonna stay right where you're at. So you need to make a decision and then take action. And that action for you, I'm not sure what that is, but I think you can figure it out. And if you can't, you should ask for help. There's a million people out there that can help you. I appreciate you guys listening. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next week.