Why I Stopped Calling Myself an Alcoholic

On my first day of sobriety, desperate for just one person to tell me it would all be okay, I asked my friend if her father—a 20-something-year veteran of AA—might talk to me. Toward the end of our conversation he asked me, earnestly, why I hadn’t once mentioned “my alcoholism,” and because I had run out of answers, I took his advice and found an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting close to my office.

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By Holly Whitaker, for Time