[DoreenMichele]

My dad drank heavily while he was in the army. He swore off alcohol when I was seven, but I never saw him drink to alcoholic levels.

I think he drank to suppress the nightmares from serving in the front lines of two wars. I think he began tapering off when he left the army when I was three. I think he did so with no conscious plan. He just didn't need as much alcohol to push away his personal demons so he could sleep and he probably just naturally reduced it over time without really thinking about it.

I've got a serious medical condition. I used to take a lot of prescription medication. I've gotten off all the drugs. It's really normal for me to stop doing X slowly over time and not really notice it until later. It's common for me to only really notice a change precisely because I talk a lot about my medical stuff with my adult sons, so we periodically go over "Oh, yeah, you used to do X, Y and Z and you don't anymore."

I also spoke once with someone who had a lot of shame surrounding a DUI on their record. One of the stories they told me: They had surgery for something and when the doctors opened them up, they found one of the organs necrotic. This was unexpected and they expressed surprise that this individual was still alive. They removed the organ in the process of doing this other surgery. The individual quit drinking after that, but still saw themselves as a bad person and an alcoholic rather than someone who was managing a terrible and life threatening medical condition with alcohol until surgery happened to resolve it.

I'm convinced that this type of thing is much more common than is generally recognized.