<p>Okay, explain. </p>
<p>^Alcohol abuse and overuse causes a lot of problems in our society. But we have a lot of stereotypes that do not help matters. i.e. The alcoholic mother starts drinking as soon as she gets up. By the time the kids get home from school she is passed out on the couch. She comes to long enough to beat the kids and order them to get more vodka. They scrape mold off of cockroach covered bread for their dinner. There are a lot of grey areas which are not in these extremes. But if people don’t recognize themselves (“hey that’s not ME”) then they may not come to terms with the idea that they might need to change. </p>
<p>Your statement is one of the stereotypical all-or-nothing mantras. But there are a lot of people who the experts define as alcoholics, (and I haven’t noticed any experts in this thread yet) who do not fit in these narrow stereotypes. They can be high-functioning, they can be “in control” most of the time, they can drink on occasion or even frequently without binging. They never feed their kids moldy bread. </p>
<p>There’s a lot more grey area than people seem to think. IMHO, dealing with the overarching problems would benefit from recognizing that.</p>
<p>Well, alcoholic and problem drinker may be getting confused, too. It’s entirely possible to have an alcohol issue and not technically be an alcoholic. Most of the experts at treatment programs are not going to buy the couple of drinks and functioning fine theory of alcoholism recovery but those sorts of people are not going to treatment programs, either. So, there is that. Alcoholics usually have to hit bottom before admitting there is an issue in the first place . Generally, I’m not a big fan of experts, though. The only person that can fix this problem is the person who has this problem. Support is one thing. But, it’s a personal issue in the end. It just is.</p>
<p>Alcoholism is an addiction, and like any addiction there are people who are high-functioning and people who are essentially NON-functioning. The difference between a problem drinker and an alcoholic is that a problem drinker chooses to make bad decisions involving alcohol, but an alcoholic has situations in which they are not able to make decisions at all - they are bound to a set of behaviors.</p>
<p>Here is an example.</p>
<p>Years ago, I would party hard on the weekends, and it was rare for me to have a weekend in which I did not drink myself stupid. But I was drinking that heavily by choice, and while some people thought I was an alcoholic, they missed that there were weeks when I did not drink at all, and days when I had a drink or two and that was it. I was a problem drinker.</p>
<p>Around the same time, I had a friend who never got drunk, but had to have a beer every couple of hours or he started to get the shakes and started to freak out. He had trouble keeping a job, for obvious reasons, but most people who did not know him never suspected he was addicted to alcohol since he never showed any signs of inebriation. He was an alcoholic.</p>
<p>It’s a complicated issue but (as mentioned earlier) for the vast majority of individuals with a drinking problem AA is ineffective. Different approaches work with different individuals - for some medications are effective, others can manage controlled drinking, many benefit from therapy etc. There’s no “one size fits all” despite the commonly held opinion (in the US) to the contrary.<br>
<a href=“http://www.salon.com/2014/03/23/the_pseudo_science_of_alcoholics_anonymous_theres_a_better_way_to_treat_addiction/”>http://www.salon.com/2014/03/23/the_pseudo_science_of_alcoholics_anonymous_theres_a_better_way_to_treat_addiction/</a></p>
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Great example. </p>
<p>I am not a social drinker, I am more of an it’s part of my meal drinker. I don’t drink everyday, however, I do most of the menu planning and there are some meals that are just better (to my wife and I) with wine or occasionally beer. Once the meal is over we stop drinking. I would say we have alcohol with our evening meals 3-4 days per week. Other days either the meal doesn’t warrant an alcoholic beverage or we are doing things that prevent us from wanting alcohol with our meal. Some above I suppose would call me an habitual drinker. It would make me unhappy to give up drinking especially wine, however, I think that would be primarily because the steak, salmon, paella, … etc wouldn’t taste quite as good and we would likely linger at the dining table and talk a little less. </p>
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Isn’t this pretty far-fetched, though? Is a single drink a day enough to maintain a physical addiction to alcohol? I think there are many, many people who have a single drink most days, and I have trouble believing that more than a tiny percentage of this group really has any problem at all.</p>
<p>Drinking a glass of wine every night with dinner does not make you an alcoholic. Being powerless over alcohol makes you an alcoholic. There are plenty of people who have a daily drink and go on occasional benders who are not alcoholics.</p>
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I would expect the one-drink-a-day alcoholic to be extremely rare. I think those who are unable to stop drinking once they start are the most common, much more so than the ones who require a steady intake, especially at such a small level. The vast majority of those who have a drink or three a day aren’t alcoholics - it is not the quantity, it is not the regularity, it is the simple question of whether or not there are situations where you lose the ability to stop drinking. You can drink a ton and not be an alcoholic, you can drink relatively little and BE an alcoholic, if you cannot control it.</p>
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<p>I agree that there are plenty of people who can have a single drink most days and be fine. But there are some out there, who, if told their supply to alcohol (even if it’s one drink) has been cut off, will react way beyond what most people would. They are self-medicating, and without that daily medication, they lose it. </p>
<p>You have to take into consideration that there are some people who get great anxiety relief or just stress relief in general, by having one glass of alcohol. Yes, this probably applies to more women than men, but there are plenty of people out there who just cannot go to sleep at night without a drink - take away that one drink and they are not happy people. </p>
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But even if this is true, do these people really have a problem that is any more significant than the problem of a person who has to have his morning cup of coffee?</p>
<p>Agree Hunt - if you really, really like your wine with meal and you miss it if you can’t have it in my mind that is the same as someone who experiences missing their morning cup of coffee. It’s probably not so much an addiction as it is a habitual thing and drinking a glass of wine everyday is not a habit that is necessarily going to lead to an alcoholic death from liver and systemic problems with any frequency. There are subtle differences between habits and addictions. </p>
<p>For some people, one drink a day might be more effective & have less side-effects than medication.</p>
<p>I have to admit I would go ballistic if someone tried to cut off my coffee supply. </p>
<p>“Missing it” is not a sign of addiction, or my kids would be addicted to Disneyworld and grandma. An alcoholic’s need goes way beyond “missing it”.</p>
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<p>cosmicfish, we have a cousin who be believe is actually addicted to Disneworld!</p>
<p>Since I don’t drink soda and don’t care for fruit juices, what is left? I drink plenty of water but when I want a beverage otherwise, I enjoy a glass of red wine, preferably Malbec, or a beer in the evening. I would say I do this about 4 times a week. I know someone who drinks 3 cans of Dr. Pepper a day and would be pretty mad if it was not available. Unless it is a myth, I was under the impression that the French drink wine daily.</p>
<p>Isn’t a glass of wine daily a heath recommendation? I don’t follow it or much care about health advice since it constantly changes anyway, but a daily drink does not an alcoholic make.Not even if you really miss it. Is this serious?</p>
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<p>Well, if this were the standard, then 85% of the adults in France and Italy are alcoholics, as @Hondu states. Having a glass or two at dinner is the norm. I drank a glass of wine literally every day when I lived there.</p>
<p>Anyway, alcoholism is a more systemic problem; it is the necessary disruption of one’s regular life in order to drink. Missing a drink one day is not alcoholism. </p>
<p>Medically, it is also important to distinguish between learned behavior and an addiction. If one drinks a glass or two of wine every day at dinner, your body actually learns what you are doing and soon expects that alcohol to metabolize at a particular time, same as an athlete’s training develops muscle memory. And if you do not have that drink, your body actually starts to signal you that something is missing, which is accurate because the drink is missing that day - that is normal. Contrast that to missing the drink and then needing to run to the store to get it, even though there is a blizzard outside - that’s alcoholism. </p>
<p>I consider social drinking when people feel pressured to conform to society and feel as though they cannot have fun without being intoxicated.</p>