Hi Sean, and welcome to MIP. First, let me say, I do understand dealing with grief in that way.

The good news is, you are reaching out. This disease of alcoholism is insidious, if indeed you feel that you are an alcoholic. Admitting that you are powerless over alcohol is, literally, a first step, in the direction of finding help. At some unknown point, for many of us what began as using alcohol to ease pain changes into a necessity to deal with life. It took me many years to learn this. I was "self-medicating" without realizing that I went from buffering myself from feeling pain to being unable to manage pain or life period, without it. 

The program of AA gives us the Twelve Steps, which details of can be found at an adjacent MIP site called 12 Steps. On the bottom of this post I have added the steps. Right now, if I were you, the first one would be the only one I would try to absorb. Try local meetings, where you can find face to face support while you learn more about our disease, meet people that have found a way to stay sober. Even just making a phone call to the number found in your phone book under Alcoholics Anonymous will give you someone to talk to about it. It sounds like alot, I know. But it is what we all have done, just one day at a time. And if one day seems too long, there have been many the time that it's been an hour, or a minute at a time. Be gentle with yourself, and do come to the board often. There are many many strong, good people here that can help. Warmly, Chris

The 12 Steps

1. 
   We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
   
   
   
   
   
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
   
   
   
   
   
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
   
   
   
   
   
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
   
   
   
   
   
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
    
    
    
    
    
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
    
    
    
    
    
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. 

Welcome Sean!  My name is Tim and I'm an alcoholic.  I'm so very sorry to hear about the loss of your child and that is something I cannot truly empathize with, but only imagine.

    I does seem to me that there are two separate solutions to the two separate problems that you relate are troubling you now.  One would be to find a meeting/counceling that is for parents who have lost a child.  My wife passed away in 2000 and I was directed to a hospital that had group meetings twice a week with several others who were in the same grieving situation.  It was a tremendous help to be able to speak with others who had shared the same loss.  There must be something of that nature in the Phoenix area and I urge you to seek it out.

     The second problem has been addressed very well and wisely by Wren above and I can add nothing more.  You seem to be well aware of what your problems are and the next step, as I see it, is to determine for yourself and those around you whom you love that you must deal with them properly.  But that is your decision to make.  Good fortune to you and do come back and share with us...Tim