Read - resume padding, brown-nosing, and nepotism.

Cue 500 commenters coming here to tell you that greek life isn’t like that at all and charity and friends for the rest of your life and professional opportunities.

You should check out a wonderful book called Drinking: A Love Story, by the late and great Caroline Knapp. She fits many of your descriptive aspects to a T, and makes a big point of how well alcohol worked for her for so long, until it didn’t, and how “hitting bottom” is usually a series of bounces against the floor…

I know it’s hard for you to see it at 32, but you are ruining your body.

You should do what feels right for you. My boyfriend is 36 and currently in in-patient treatment for alcoholism. He never drank in high school, barely drank in college, drank “normally” in his 20s, and his problems started in his 30s. He thought he was fine, he made it through law school, had a few temp jobs, a…

I’m in your boat as well. I know that the only thing that will really make me take a hard look is a slap in the face from the doctor. Which I guess is why I totally avoid going to the doctor.

Sobriety (9 months next week whoop whoop!) has taught me that there is a great need for adult blanket forts, hopscotch, sidewalk chalk afternoons, and hours spent jumping on trampolines. I was never bored as a child, why am I bored as an adult? Why is drinking the only source of fun left? I genuinely miss playing…

I’m sorry to be overdramatic but this just hits too close to home. My friend was a functional addict. She had a pill popping problem that her friends and family knew about, but she was a good parent and a good student and did well on the surface. SO well that when she went to get help and when her family attended…

The thing is, I was you. Until one day I wasn’t-somewhere in my body or my brain a little switch got thrown and I’d lost the ability to control things. I’d go out at night, promising myself I’d only have one or two drinks, and I’d wake up the next morning having no idea how I got home or when. I’d hate to walk past my…

Thank you for your honest post. You sound a lot like my partner, who is now in his early 40s and quit drinking cold turkey a few months ago. Going to a therapist might be a good way to start. It doesn’t have to be about alcohol, but alcohol can be part of it. It can help you figure out your relationship with alcohol…

Ughh, I am so sick of that “loosen up” crap. I rarely drink, partially because my dad was an alcoholic, but mostly because I can take it or leave it. I just like being clear-headed most of the time! I’m perfectly capable of getting crazy and silly without booze, and I’m tired of being told to “loosen up” so that other…

Yup. I once attended a 5-day bachelorette ‘weekend’ that was 99% drinking and 1% we actually stood up and did something. By day 3 I was like, “Guys. I feel like shit. I need to take at least one day off from drinking. Sidenote, how do all of the rest of you not feel like shit right now?” I was slapped in the face with…

You sound a lot like my dad, and let me tell you, that wasn’t a fun childhood. He lost his colon at 45. Liver damage started a bit earlier than that, and has officially progressed to hepatitis at 57. But he will never stop. You may very well be a functional alcoholic. You may be one for the rest of your life - the…

I hope you get more responses to your comment, because you ask good questions. I have three close friends (all gay men, as it happens) who drank exactly as you describe, and did so for 15-25 years. In each case, the fall was brutal. One ended up in the hospital in medically managed withdrawal for a solid month, near…

YES! My husband’s family is a long line of hard drinkers and alcoholics (functioning and not). His dad is a craft-kitschy artist (which I love), but has continued to give us “funny” gifts he makes. Signs that say stuff like, “Alcohol: because no good story ever started with eating a salad.” HAR HAR. Like, stuff that’s…

I’m sorry you were pressured into drinking. Sounds like you did it to make your friends feel comfortable, and keep up the **party** spirit. It sucks that you caved, knowing your own vulnerability, but you had two people bullying you into drinking. You’re stronger than them, for acknowledging your limits and being…

I don’t drink, because addiction runs in my family, so growing up my extended family was basically one continuous DARE class. I’m not the most outgoing person, and I don’t like being around drunk people, which means I opt out of a LOT of social activities.

So many events in your 20s and 30s center around alcohol. Hell,…

Wait. Why would you be friends on Facebook with people who bullied you and treated you like junk? Isn’t that the opposite of who you want on your FB page?

That’s still insecurity though. Because you assume they care a lot about your relationship status. And maybe they have a lot of cool stuff going on in their own life, they just don’t care about impressing people on Facebook. Doesn’t mean they’re less happy than you or that your life is better than theirs.