It's more about the relationship you have with alcohol than the amount you drink
Eg "dry drunk" look it up
Some people can drink a fair amount on occasion but maintain an overall healthy relationship with alcohol, others can stay within the supposed healthy limits (your comment about units per week by the way is not the whole story re healthy limits) but would get anxious or irritable or worse at the suggestion of stopping or not drinking when they usually would and how much they usually would
The weekly limit is recommended to be spread across the week with at least 3 days include
Also remember that people pouring/serving their own drinks at home often massively underestimate how much they are drinking and don't check the strength of what they're drinking eg there's huge variation in strength in beers
People who drink spirits tend to think they're having a single when they're usually having at least a triple
As a pp said 'alcoholic' conjures up an image of someone at rock bottom
That level of alcoholism doesn't occur overnight. Any addiction tends to creep up on you.
I am/was the daughter, granddaughter, niece and cousin to addicts mainly alcohol
It never starts in ways that are obvious to either the addict or those around them. It's really hard to pinpoint the time they "became" an alcoholic
Same as many people with caffeine. It would be hard to give up
Interesting example you chose. Caffeine is massively addictive I was an addict. I didn't realise. After my last mc I did a lot of research and read of the impact of caffeine on pregnancy and decided to quit. I had no idea! I quit "cold turkey" and very quickly (the next day) felt extremely ill. I thought a flu, and as I am asthmatic with complex lung history I went to drs, luckily for me the dr correctly dx caffeine withdrawal and advised me to not quit cold but to wean myself off it gradually which I did. It genuinely was a shock I'd no idea how much I was consuming (worked in an office job at the time and that particular office had a real coffee culture, we didn't even make a cup from fresh each time someone just would go around topping everyone up maybe every 20 mins?) plus my preferred drink outside of work was coke (where we were living at the time it was insanely cheap!)
It's an incredibly addictive substance
There was also an episode of "eat well for less" where the dad was drinking about 8 litres of Diet Coke a day! Again he was advised to not quit cold but to gradually wean himself off it And it was explained why on the show briefly iirc
It’s about a need that nothing else can replace, regardless of how much.
Absolutely! It's about the addicts dependence on their addiction their relationship with it
I also have gambling and exercise addicts in the family - just as awful as substance addiction