Am I an alcoholic?

ChrisJSY said:
Loss aside, being an alcoholic =! being addicted.
You + heavy drinking = alcoholic.


I can't believe you think because you only drank heavy amounts you're not an alcoholic. You drank lots of ALCOHOL.

;)
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As I said before, you have good reason to dislike heavy alcohol consumption so your views are different to mine.

It all depends on how you define alcoholic. If you use the medical definition then, yes, I was an alcoholic (and still am). If you take a more practical approach then I was a very heavy drinker and have toned down to being a heavyish drinker in terms of quantity consumed (I don't think I am a particularly heavy drinker). As mentioned above, a lot of it depends on how you react to alcohol - it takes considerably more to make me drunk than most people I know and always has done. I obviously have a high natural tolerance to alcohol, therefore what seems like a large amount of alcohol to a lot of people is a moderate amount to me - everybody's different which makes defining alcoholism difficult and not something which can easily be defined by setting a static limit.
 
pitchfork said:
One of my mates said i'm turning into an alcoholic, I don't get drunk everyday, maybe once, twice, three times a week. Depending on how many times I go out with mates, drink in the evenings (if i'm in or down the pub but 3-4 slow ones), wine with my meal, liquid lunch sometimes.
I don't drink due to any kind of problems, I love life, I just enjoy it, would you consider me an alcoholic though?
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Sounds like a normal week for me.
 
bushmins said:
Being an alcoholic is certinally nothing to do with how much you drink or when you drink. Its all about how you react to the alchol consumption. Go to a few AA meeting and take a look, then youll see what an alcholic is.

You can be an alcholic and not drink.
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So if I drank 2 shots of whiskey ever 3 hours I would be classed as not an alco, but if i was alergic to alcohol resulting in a swollen throat and a rash over my face I would be an alcoholic?

Righto
 
I can't believe the crap I'm reading in this thread except for BigStan.

An alcoholic is somebody who is both psychologically and physiologically addicted.
In other words your body shakes and your mind tells you that you're not going to get through the day without drink.
Their whole day will revolve around getting a drink.
An alcoholic is somebody who could possibly die if you took alcohol away from them unless you use safety management and harm reduction techniques.
An alcoholic is somebody who's family life is in turmoil.

A binge drinker is not an alcoholic and not likely to turn into an alcoholic but should be worried about harm or even alcoholic poisoning.
 
Sic said:
don't drink for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it
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Don't eat for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't watch TV for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it[

Don't go on the internet for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it[

Don't ahve sex for a week, assuming you are in a relationship with regular sex. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it.

Don't eat tasy food for a week, only bland tasteless stodgy muck. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't sleep for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't drink juice or soda and only warm tap water for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it.
 
I have 3 family members who are alcoholics. If you drink a lot that doesn't make you an alcoholic. Alcoholism like all addictions is a need of alcohol for general sustaining of ones self. If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think about is your next drink then I'd get concerned. All 3 of the family members that are, are recovering all about 3 years sober or more. It is a dependency on it that makes it an addiction.
I'm not condoning binge drinking in any way, but drinking large amounts although not advisable and possible damaging is not Alcoholism however regularly you do this.

"a physical compulsion, coupled with a mental obsession. We mean that we had a distinct physical desire to consume alcohol beyond our capacity to control it, and in defiance of all rules of common sense. We not only had an abnormal craving for alcohol but we frequently yielded to it at the worst possible times. We did not know when (or how) to stop drinking. Often we did not seem to have sense enough to know when not to begin."

That to me sums up alcoholism nicely.

If you have the shakes coming off alcohol it doesn't mean you are an alcoholic, that's just how the body works. It's a similar affect to drinking abnormal amounts of caffiene and then stopping.

If you feel that your drinking is inhibiting your ability to live as you would like to or is harming you or those around you then cut down. If you can't cut down and find you have to drink regularly then go to the GP or a mate or someone you trust and get them to keep tabs on you.
 
markyp23 said:
Me neither
I imagine a physcological addiction is sufficient.

Your body does not need to be shaking for you to be an alcholic! I can't believe people think that.

That isn't a requisite for alcoholism.

Too big a generalisation.
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It is actually a psychological or/either/and a physical/bioligical addiction.

Agreed not shaking but trying to get the point over of the physical/biological dependency.

Most alcoholics have a profound effect on their families.
This may include violence, total withdrawal from family life and spending all the family income on alcohol.

Binge drinkers are not alcoholics.
 
The shakes arise via a sever lack of GABA neuroinhibitor. In this sense stopping salcohol consumption will lead to death, unlike say a heroine addict suddenly stopping. This is when yur brian physically needs alcohol in the blood stream to prevent death. That is the extreme end of alcoholism.

Liking alcohol and regualrly getting drunk is not a psychriatric disorder. May not be good for you but its not an alcoholic disorder.
 
D.P. said:
The shakes arise via a sever lack of GABA neuroinhibitor. In this sense stopping salcohol consumption will lead to death, unlike say a heroine addict suddenly stopping. This is when yur brian physically needs alcohol in the blood stream to prevent death. That is the extreme end of alcoholism.
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Alcohol is the only 'dependent' drug that if you suddenly stop it can kill you and you must be safety managed but you are one of the rare people that already know this.
I've just done 4 months volunteering in a drug/alcohol centre which ran concurrently with a Drugs Awareness course that I did and I can't count the amount of alcoholics that said they were going to suddenly stop and we had to prevent them.
 
D.P. said:
Don't eat for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't watch TV for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it[

Don't go on the internet for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it[

Don't ahve sex for a week, assuming you are in a relationship with regular sex. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it.

Don't eat tasy food for a week, only bland tasteless stodgy muck. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't sleep for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't drink juice or soda and only warm tap water for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it.
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I'm sure we can all avoid doing these things .. (EXCEPT EAT & SLEEP!!!) It's just we would rather not...
 
I get bad shakes after a hard session, im not an alchoholic though, i dont think, iv more or less drank everyweekend since i was 14 and im 22 now, but very rarely drink during the week.
Also the shakes is called Delirium tremens i think :D
 
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D.P. said:
Don't eat for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't watch TV for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it[

Don't go on the internet for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it[

Don't ahve sex for a week, assuming you are in a relationship with regular sex. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it.

Don't eat tasy food for a week, only bland tasteless stodgy muck. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't sleep for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it

Don't drink juice or soda and only warm tap water for a week. come back and tell us how you feel, and if you managed it.
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They have nothing to do with it. If he's an alcoholic he will have a physical / mental need to drink alcohol, not just because he likes it. :rolleyes:
 
Jokester said:
You're officially classed as an alcoholic if you regularly drink to get drunk.
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hm, flawed really though isnt it, sometimes i just drink because im on the lash and its fun to do cos theres nothin else to occupy me, and some of my best memorys/half memorys are from when i have been drunk with all my mates intoxicated..
But iv barely drank since new years, mostly because i dont see a lot of my friends v much, my flatmates been told by doctors to never drink again and my best mate is in afghan.. its no fun doing it alone!

I judge alcoholism on time spent during week drunk, and drinking habbits out of a social enviroment
 
I don't drink at all, I can't see the appeal. All I see of young people is them trying to look cool with each other, boasting about how much they drank such and such a time, or how much they spent in a night. In fact, that seems to be what the conversation post-night out seems to consist of, what everyone had to drink, in order, at what price, and where. Anything else is just a minor event, almost definitely brought on by the booze anyway lol :p
 
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