Another Self-indulgant personal treatise

I need to get this out of my head and since this seems to be the only place that I'm good at the verbal diarrhea that comes with that, here I go.
At this point in my life, 26 years old, it's time for me to admit that I may have a problem. The last few months, since moving home, I've put away more alcohol than I have in 2 years living in Kent. I was finally around people that I enjoy drinking with and have fun with. But I'm not afraid of the road I'm walking down. Last night was another night that there are large parts of completely missing. I was at the bar then I woke up in the backseat of my car. I don't know what happened in between. Nothing has come back to me at all. I know that this is something that is very common and I'm hoping that I was my normal jovial drunk self and didn't do anything too embarrassing of offensive to those I was with. But this is something that never used to happen and that's something that legitimately scares me. There are two reasons here. First, I'm feeling the urge to drink more than ever before. At times it feels like a physical manifestation and I know where that leads. Second, I have stopped controlling myself while drinking. Most normal people drink until they get drunk and then stop because they know how crappy they'll feel later. For some reason, that self-preservation instinct as disappeared in my head. My overall point is that I know that I'm heading towards something much more serious and with a family history of alcoholism, I have started to scare myself.
I know this sounds like whining. Even to me it sounds like I'm whining after a couple of bad nights. But I'm not a fan of the road that it looks like I'm taking and I hope to be able to cut the problem off before it takes a more serious turn. Up until now, it's always been a joke about calling myself the group's alcoholic. But there's nothing funny intended by this now. I don't have a drinking problem right now. But after some serious soul-searching, it became pretty obvious to me that I could easily get one. And while I know I'm nowhere near as bad as a full-blown alcoholic and I haven't done as much damage as a full-blown alcoholic, I'm afraid that is what's in my future if I don't start changing the way I think about alcohol and social interactions in general. That's the part that's going to take some serious inner work, but right now it's something that I have to do. I'm terrified of what I might do and more importantly, terrified that I will hurt and/or lose those close to me if I don't change my behavior. I still have to figure out how to do this because for the past 8 years, booze has pretty much been the main avenue for social interaction. While most of my friends have grown up, matured, and learned how to have fun without booze, I fell behind in that. Maturing in that manner is something that I need to do now and as fast as I can.