What is an alcoholic?

[Ilovepugs2017]

I’m concerned about the drinking habits of someone close to me.

What would you say is the definition of an alcoholic?

How many drinks? How often they drink?

Thanks for your replies, I’m concerned because they’ve been drinking to excess for a while.

Recently tried commiting suicide whilst under the influence of drink.

Been out the last three nights drinking A LOT. They binge drink each time they go out and sometimes drink a lot at home when they aren’t out.

Seem to be unable to enjoy life without drinking.

They have a lot of friends who are heavy drinkers.

Spoken to them about my concerns as I care but they are saying they are not an alcoholic and they are fine 🤷‍♀️

@PurpleSky300 absolutely. Plus there's always an excuse for a drink. "I've had a hard day and I deserve a drink". "Woo, today's been great! Let's have a drink to celebrate!" "I've had some bad news". "I've had some good news". "It's almost the weekend". There's always something.

Yes. I think the excuses show that most of these people know, deep down, that they do have some kind of problem. It's just easy to mask and deny it when you've got lots of friends who do the same, so you don't stand out, and you can always compare yourself to heavier drinkers and say 'at least I'm not George Best' etc etc.

People sometimes get hung up on specific 'flags' so I'll give an example of one of my friends, who I do not think has a problem even though he sometimes over-indulges. He has a couple of drinks on a Friday night and maybe goes a bit overboard on Saturday occasionally - but he doesn't care about the alcohol. He has no attachment to booze, he would be just as happy and enjoy himself just as much on soft drinks, and if you swapped out his beers for Cokes or alcohol-free alternatives then he wouldn't bat an eyelid. Sometimes he comes out and drinks beer, sometimes tonic water and cordials and all sorts in between. It's that detachment and the not 'needing' the booze which makes the difference, in my experience.

@Ilovepugs2017 those are all red flags for a significant alcohol problem.

The chances are they know they've got a problem. But, in my opinion at least, an alcoholic will only seriously start considering doing something about their drinking when the despair about what they've already lost due to drinking, plus the fear about what they may go on to lose if they continue drinking, outweighs the outright terror of how boring, isolating and impossible an alcohol-free life seems.

The difficulty from our point of view is that we can look at their life and it's immediately clear that their life would improve immeasurably if they just stopped drinking. But they don't have to agree. We have neither the moral nor legal right to insist someone else lives their life the way we think they should, no matter that we're doing it with good intentions. Sometimes all you can do is make sure they know that if they ever decide that they need help that you'll be there for them.

If you've mentioned it and they've brushed you off then there's nothing more you can do.

I suggest you contact Al Anon - it's a support group for the friends and relatives of alcoholics and they will help you to learn how to protect yourself from the behaviour of the other person.

I read online about someone concerned because a relative drank a whisky every evening. So had a bottle maybe once a month? They assume he was an alcoholic. But almost everyone who commented thought that was quite moderate.

I always go back to the line I heard years back....

An alcoholic is anyone who drinks more than you do and that you don't like.

Not an official description obviously but covers a lot of situations.

According to a poster on another thread , it's someone who nips into a pub for one pint without telling their wife.
On a serious note, it's the inability to control the amount you drink. The feeling of wanting to drink and that taking precedence. I haven't drunk for 11 years now, and I know that I wouldn't be able to stop if I started again.

Using the term 'alcoholic' won't help because most people think of it as the outdated idea of someone who is physically dependent on alcohol, eg drinks in the morning, drinks spirits, gets the shakes if they stop etc. It's also tied up in a history where 'alcoholics' were thought to be born like that, and it was some kind of personal/, moral failing.

Anyone who relies on alcohol (whether physical, emotional, or social) is going to be resistant to conversations about it, but if you were going to try I'd suggest talking about whether drinking is making their life better or worse, rather than trying to define them as alcoholic or not.

Well it is a personal/moral failing tbh, drinking so much that you hurt the people around you.

DH has experience of alcoholics in his life. He recognises the 'always an excuse to have a drink' thing, plus the life and soul of the party and the secrets and lies around drinking.

I personally think it's when someone starts to use alcohol as an emotional crutch rather than just being a social drinker.

Like others I think the word 'alcoholic' is less useful than thinking about whether the way someone is using (or misusing) alcohol.

For me, the easiest definition is that the drinking causes problems for themselves or others, or that they are acting in a dishonest way around their drinking (minimising drinking, hiding how much they're drinking, denying or minimising the way they behaved when drinking).

Problematic alcohol use can be bigger than that - for example someone could be openly drinking 2-3 big glasses of wine every night and not apparently experiencing significant effects in the short term, but over the long term, this level of alcohol consumption would cause harm. So time frames play a role too.

My friend ticked all those boxes and ended up the Priory - that list is correct

Does alcohol cause problems in the person’s life?

if the person has to not drink for whatever reason, is that anything anything more than a petty annoyance?

@Sapphire387 I don't think you understood the context of my post. The definition of an 'alcoholic' came out of Christian and class beliefs, the same kind that saw 'the poor' as a moral underclass.

The simple fact is that alcoholic is an addictive substance to humans, anyone who drinks enough of it will develop a dependency, psychological first and physical if frequent enough. That goes for all humans, regardless of how 'moral' they believe themselves. How quickly that happens varies (factors such as genetic predisposition, trauma, environment) but it can and does happen to anyone. Neuroscience has taught us that alcohol rewires the brain over time so to suggest that it's just about morals and willpower is factually incorrect.

Your rhetoric about morals isn't helpful, it reinforces the notion that it's 'us and them' which stops a lot of people accepting they have an issue and seeking help in the first place.

If alcoholism isn't ultimately about willpower how do any alcoholics stop drinking? Naltrexone isn't routinely prescribed in the UK.

@Ilovepugs2017 It sounds like your relative has a mental health problem such as depression, and is using alcohol to self medicate.
Can they be persuaded to go see their GP and get help?

@HowardTJMoon that doesn't mean that the solution is willpower. Willpower is proven to be a finite resource. Its a lot more complicated than that (same as how being a healthy weight isn't down to willpower, and skinny people don't just summon up extra willpower compared to people who are overweight)
Willpower exists, but it's a tiny, tiny part of recovery from addiction.

I used to drink a bottle of wine a night (for about 6/7 years on and off) I would say that amount didn’t start of as me a
classing myself as an alcoholic but in the last year I would say it did. Funny I never ever drank more than that even if out but it became a complete habit. And because wine is “classier” than vodka and much more socially acceptable to be drinking on a Tuesday evening I was kidding myself that I was in control.

if it was a bad day - wine
good day - celebrate with wine
nearly the weekend - wine
weekend - wine

i did have a problem. I’m not sure if I would call myself an all out alcoholic but I certainly was close

stopped overnight and won’t look back. It’s expensive. Dangerous and I’m sleeping better not drinking

@Wimberry if it doesn't hinge on the person with the addiction ultimately deciding to exert their will to stop drinking and not drink again, what does it depend on?

Is alcohol addiction fundamentally different to, say, nicotine addiction? Because I've stopped smoking. While "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking" helped reframe my view of smoking, ultimately it came down to my willpower to decide that regardless of how I felt, I wasn't going to put another cigarette in my mouth.

ultimately it came down to my willpower to decide that regardless of how I felt, I wasn't going to put another cigarette in my mouth.

“Willpower” is heavily tied up with a lot of things though. The depth of the association: someone who has been casually smoking for a year will find it easier to quit than a pack-a-day smoker for 10 years and the pack a day smoker will find it easier than a pack-and-a-half smoker of 30 years. The availability of other coping tools. The level of other stressors in a person’s life. The presence or absence of trauma, and the degree of that trauma. Tiredness and hunger weaken willpower. The presence of strong explicit external motivators, eg a cancer diagnosis vs “wanting to be healthier”. A supportive environment.

Yes it comes down to willpower, but a person who is subject to more of the above pressures will have to find and exercise a much higher level of willpower than someone who is not.

The term used clinically now isn't alcoholic or alcohol dependent it's alcohol use disorder.

Because it isn't about how much someone drinks, or how often, it's about what happens when they drink and what their thought processes are around alcohol.