Rather than saying “My name is Bob, and I’m an alcoholic”, how about “My name is Bob, and my heart is filled with unexpressed griefs and losses I have never figured out how to share, or heal”?
It’s a bit longer. How about “My name is Bob, and I feel emotional pain every day”?
When AA works–and it does work for some, although not for most over the long term–I feel it is because people find a communion they needed, among their own kind, among people like them, among people who have felt what they have felt, hurt like they have hurt.
It is painful to say you are an alcoholic, but perhaps even more painful–but more useful, possibly–to admit that you feel vast rivers of emotion you don’t know what to do with, how to deal with, and that a major part of your illness is having lost a sense of belonging, and of intrinsic self worth.