Thank you for this; it helps me understand what's been going on with some of my friends that are alcoholics.

It's tough for me because I was never a big drinker in the first place. I never even developed a taste for certain forms of alcohol, and I can count only one time in my life that I ever got drunk to the point of blacking out (special circumstances). Eventually, it turned out that drinking alcohol exacerbated my gout, so I gave it up, but I didn't have nearly the trouble walking away from it that you and other alcoholics did.