I've heard that if you're life depends on alcohol you're an alcoholic. Well I don't consider myself and alcoholic, since I rarely drink myself and haven't been what I consider truly inebriated in a long time, but I do seem to be involved with alcohol quite frequently, and even cyclicly (is that a word?).
During college I mostly only had access to cheap beer, and a Heineken or something Canadian was considered premium. Then I moved to Seattle and ended up surrounded by beer snobs. That's where I got my "sophisticated" taste that I still enjoy today, as I knew the owner of Bottleworks, Matt Vandenberg through some friends. At one point two of my housemates worked at the store, and we enjoyed and indulged in the finest Belgian brews and the hoppiest and strongest beers that this country can produce. My snobbiest favorite was Oude Kriek, which most people I offered it too found unpalatable, but anyway.
For the past few years I've been in Denver. I wasn't here long before I ended up working for NightRiders, the designated driver service that got lots of publicity for their flashy image and catchy scooter gimmick. That job lasted a year before the company went out of business after a last ditch effort to keep things going with a trip across the country to end drunk driving. Incidentally that trip also ended my plans to be a documentary film maker, but that's another story. I had a short stint with NoDUI Denver, which I refer to as noduiden (no dwee den) (it's their phone number), and then went on to the corporate world of customer service and glorified telemarketing. Still though, that was round 2 of my life depending on alcohol.
Now I'm in grad school to be a librarian (actually knowledge management) and have picked up a side job for a company called Geeks Who Drink. They run a great trivia game in about 30 pubs in Colorado and New Mexico. Luckily, I'm not dealing with drunks directly anymore, as I did as a designated driver, but instead I check trivia facts. Still though, that's 3 dependencies on alcohol. Am I an alcoholic?