Not so funny when it actually happens to you:

Because of really bad experiences with alcoholics as a child, I am afraid of people who drink. My psychologist and my doctor wrote that down.

When I became seriously ill and could no longer work in my old job, I had to retrain. To do this, you have to go to the German employment office and get an assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, including what your doctor and therapist have to say.

They read the paper from my doctor and my psychologist, but just skimmed over the words and decided that because the word "alcoholic" was there, I must be the alcoholic. They told me that I could get paid retraining and benefits, but only if I attended a therapy group for alcoholics once a week - me, who is afraid of alcoholics because of the abuse I suffered as a child. .... I immediately started crying and swore that I had no problem with alcohol, only with alcoholics!

It took 6 months to get someone at the job centre to actually read the papers word for word to find out that me saying "I'm not an alcoholic" was not me being an alcoholic in denial. I got a half-assed apology and my retraining 6 months after I could have started it because of this. Not to mention that every time I refused to go to AA meetings they threatened to take away my benefits and I was in such a bad mental state that I probably would have killed myself without the help of my family. Oh, and my family who tried to intervene were labelled as co-alcoholics, holding me back.