I sort of understand your question, and I'll try to answer it based on my own experience. The short version is yes it's possible to be a drunk and not have problems (immediately) or perhaps more accurately not suffer any negative consequnces from the substance abuse.

Take the case of my father. He was an alcoholic, the whole time I was growing up. But he like you did most of his drinking at home at night. So he never got a DUI - he did however drive drunk on occasion if we'd been out visiting friends, and frankly he should have got a DUI on those occasions, but he got lucky. He never lost a job due to drinking and generally functioned well in the world. It's unknown if he suffered physical consequences of his drinking, because he dropped dead of a massive coronary when he was 68. Did alcohol contribute to that? Probably.

Now take my case. I was a heavy drinker right from the age of 18 until the age of 38. In about 2002 I started writing in my journal that I thought I had a problem with alcohol and that I needed to stop because I was starting to become physically dependent on it. But really I didn't think it was that big a deal, because I was still holding down a good job, wasn't blacking out, wasn't getting DUI's etc. Like you I did all my drinking at home at night.

But and here's the but. For some people who are heavy and regular drinkers, you can start to develop tolerance for the alcohol, which means you need more and more booze to get the same high. So your 5 drinks a night, might become 7 and so on. For me it progressed to the point where I was drinking a 1 litre bottle of hard whisky / 24 hour period.

And I started having negative consequences. I started having black outs and passing out. I've injured myself numerous times when I passed out and fell during a black out, only to come too with blood everywhere and not remember a thing. I started having withdrawal seizures. I finally lost a job because I showed up at work drunk one day. I landed in hospitals needing a medical detox. I have a fatty liver, but thank God I stopped before I developed cirrhosis.

So you many not have experienced anything bad YET, but if you keep drinking the way you are drinking, it could get a lot worse really quickly to the point where you experience negative consequences but are unable to stop even though you want to, without help.

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