Alcohol and the changing of I

I find myself solo in a somewhat unfamiliar city (DC) on St. Patty's and a part of me still yearns to hit the bars and do the traditional drunkfest thing. Beyond the financial issues however, in general, as I've been transitioning myself mentally and physically, the need to ingest copious amount of alcohol has diminished greatly from what I have done in the past. I'm sure a major part of this change is that I am simply happier, now that the secret and alienating burden of my feminine-self and the shame that came with it has been lifted. But I also think it goes deeper than that.

I think my increasing success in reducing my previously dominant harmful habits such as heavy drinking is only partly related to my emerging feminine self, is also because my own sense of self-confidence and self-acceptance has risen sharply in the last few years. And indeed it was only when I was able to improve that basic, gender-neutral part of myself that I was able to face my transsexual issues head on. Excessive drinking as a mechanism of coping with those deeper issues was no longer needed. By the way, I think definitions of what is excessive differs greatly from person to person, based on physical AND mental factors, and I think general limits and definitions as mentioned in laws and medical and psychological diagnosis schemes for such labels as alcoholism are mostly useless.

But the point I want to make is that I don't think it was really my recent coming to terms with my femme self that enabled this self-improvement; in fact it was the other way around. My reason for discussing this is that I get the sense in chatting with some closeted tgs that they might look at the ability to transition as a method for solving all their problems. I'm not saying, however, that it can't work other ways because as I've stated elsewhere, everyone must find their own path, and those paths will always differ. What I am saying in the hope that it may is some tiny way help others out there , is that