How would you characterize this person’s alcohol problem?
Question by SoandSo: How would you characterize this person’s alcohol problem?
For many years I have referred to my husband as being an alcoholic. He goes on day-long drinking binges on his days off from work – usually twice a week. He frequently plans not to drink or to limit how much he drinks, but often is not successful. He generally drinks about a fifth of hard liquor in one drinking episode, maybe a little more. He regularly has ‘blackouts’, does things that upset me and his children, and he has many times spent money on liquor when we needed it for something else. He has every excuse in the book for why he “has to” drink, and half the time the excuses involve something I did wrong. He has been drinking since he was a teenager, and is now 37. Recently, I have started talking to my grandmother about the problem, and she insists he is not an alcoholic and that he drinks because I “let him” and that if I would stand up to him, he would quit. This has become a a major source of contention between her and myself, and I’m getting really tired of her saying he’s not really an alcoholic. She defines “alcoholic” as someone who cannot control their drinking and is physically addicted, loses their job, etc. Her biggest beef is that my husband has gone as long as 3 months without drinking when he was threatened with being kicked out of my sister’s house if he did. But as soon as we were back in our own place, he went right back to drinking. Another thing she always mentions is the fact that no matter how drunk he gets, he will not get behind the wheel because he has had 2 DWIs in the past, and he knows a third would be a felony, so he NEVER does it no matter how plastered.
I define “alcoholism” basically as a progressive illness that begins when someone starts habitually abusing alcohol to ‘escape’ or otherwise cope with some psychological, mental, or other problem in life. This eventually turns into a cycle of alcohol abuse which becomes a stronger and stronger addiction, until the person can’t control it at all, and it can eventually lead to an actual physical dependency, and even death if not treated. I do not consider my husband to be at the stage of chemical dependency, but I most certainly do think he has a psychological addiction to drinking, much the same as a person can get addicted to shopping, gambling, etc. I believe that if some circumstances in his life changed, his alcoholism would become worse, and could eventually progress into that final stage.
Okay, so now here’s my point and my question: she said it so much that I finally decided to look again at the definition of “alcoholism”, since it has been years since I read anything about the subject (we’ve been married 13 years) and I *guess* I could have misunderstood when I was younger, but what I found is that there is really a lot of disagreement among the various authorities about what really is alcoholism – whether it’s an overdrinking habit, or whether it is only the person who has become physically dependent on alcohol. So, my grandmother and i are really just arguing about semantics, and that there are just a lot of different understandings out there about what exactly is an alcoholic. So I ask you, General Public, would you call my husband’s drinking problems “alcoholism”, or what would you call it? Thanks for reading my long question!!
Best answer:
Answer by The Dez Pirate
Alcoholism doesn’t have to be progressive (It can be because your liver builds up a tolerance.) but if you always just drink 2-3 drinks a day, but find you literally cannot go one day without them, you could be considered an alcoholic just as much as a black out drunk could.
The main issue is that he can’t seem to stop. If he actually stuck to his limits, then he may not be an alcoholic. But someone who drinks to get drunk, and can’t stop themselves deffinitley is, even if it is just one or two days a week.
When my mom was younger she got alcohol poisoning, and the doctor told her if she could go 3 months without having a single drink, she didn’t have a drinking problem. I think the same process would apply to your husband. If he cannot stop drinking for any period of time, he has a problem.
Also, even if he does it only once a year, no one should consuming a fifth + of whiskey on their own.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!