i talked to my friend recently about it and theres seems to be many interpretations/opinions of it. by his definiton i was one. *gulp* what do you define an alcoholic to be?
I consider my friend to be an alcoholic because he'll binge drink on four lokos or he'll drink like 18 beers in one night. Or he'll drink 3 four lokos in a single night for 2-3 nights in a row then take like the day off.. he's not too bad of an alcoholic but he even admits that he is one. I care about him and he worrys me.
Once you start drinking, you can't stop until you pass out. One beer is enough to set off a binge. I've known a few people like that and avoid them like plague. If things get realy bad, they'll go into withdrawl without it. But it takes a long time to get that bad. I like to drink myself, I brew my own beer and wine, but I don't like getting shit faced drunk and don't like being around people that are. And I really don't like being around alcoholics, since they'll screw their lives up enough to have to sponge off of someone else to get by.
Not all alcoholics have to mooch to get by. While I try to avoid alcoholics, I'm slowly falling in love with one. He's a 'functioning alcoholic' even though no alcoholic really is.. he drinks only at night until he's shitfaced but always tries to counter it with enough water or fluids, and is always able to wake up and get all the things done in his day that he needs to before he drinks.
He doesn't yet anyway. All alcoholics start out as functioning alcoholics. Plenty of them can go like that for decades before they really start fucking up. And even if they don't start mooching, they'll still ditch every responsibility they have cause there isn't enough money to pay the bills and get drunk too. Most of the older functional alcoholics I've worked with have ditched their wife and kids and work temp agency jobs while sharing a small apartment with a couple other drunks and addicts. Rent and bills are split 3-4 ways so most of the money can go to drinking.
Well, considering he's gone from shooting meth daily to 'functioning alcoholic' mode, to working on cutting back his drinking, I'd say there is room for change in all people..
I guess that's an improvement. I used to drink heavier myself about ten years ago, I just never let it take control of me. I have an alcoholic/pill head friend that's in jail for DWI & negligent homocide. I haven't seen him in years since his drinking got him black listed from every shipyard within 20 miles of New Orleans and he had to leave town to find work. He used to have a lawyer here that got him out of +20 DWI's, but there was no getting him out of the one that killed someone. I'd like to help him out, maybe send him some money in jail, but I know if I do he'll show up at my doorstep when he gets out. And I don't need the kind of drama that I know he'll provide if I let him crash here.
One of my friends describes me as one . ( he doesn't drink) Admittedly i use to be really bad . drinking until i was really shit face , Passing out unable to remember i done the night before and making a real dick of myself. The hangovers and the emotional come down of my actions changed my evil ways . Learnt the art of moderation with the demon drink. Now enjoy a few with friends at weekends and no hangovers on Saturday Sunday mornings .
I once dated a guy that was a pretty bad alcoholic. I ended up breaking up with him within a month because of that, actually. He once told me that his parents accepted his alcholism because he woke up 3 different times in the hospital during his teenage years from a heroin overdose. They (and he) considered alcohol the lesser of two evils. I find that train of thinking rather sad. At least with an overdose, you just die. No one has to watch you kill yourself over the course of 20 or 30 years. I don't think trading one addiction for another can be considered improvement. There is room for change in all people, certainly, but alcoholics and people with really addictive personalities like that really need to stay completely away from all addictive substances.
There are different types of alcohol. There's your regular binge drinker (most people inc. me) Then there's you binge drinker who does and doesn't become a nuisance to other people/ruining lives. There's the few drinks each day all their life but doesn't over do it or fuck up their health and theirs the chronic alcohol who is physically addicted to it and will go to any length to get there hands on it, and some will even drink pure meths, after shave, etc.. The main thing to assess in yourself is whether or not it is having an overall negative effect on your life.
Actually, by strict definition, an alcoholic is physically addicted to alcohol. A true alcoholic will go into withdrawl if they stop drinking. Most hard boozers are not true alcoholics, they have a psychological addiction rather than a physical one.
There's a bit more to it than that though, there are several grades of alcoholism, rated from Alpha to Epsilon (AFAICR). Can't recall how they all go (and TBH, can't be arsed looking), but there's alkies who've always got a drink in their hand yet never seem to get overly drunk, then there's alkies who can stay sober for days/weeks/months at a time & yet one sniff of the barmaids apron & nothing else will do but for them to drink themselves insensible, there's others as well, they're just the ones I can remember, but the pertinant thing is that they're all classed as alcoholics. And really, why split hairs between a psychological and physical addiction? Crack isn't physically addictive but "merely" psychological, yet who could really argue that its effects aren't more pernicious than the physically addictive heroin. Although that's not taking into account the fact that most crack users use heroin and vice/verse and a lot (at least in UK, dunno about anywhere else) heavily abuse alcohol. Addiction will fuck you up, don't really matter overly much whether it's physical or mental.
I wouldn't say that if you drink everyday you're any alcoholic, I'd say that if you couldn't go a day without a drink THEN you're an alcoholic. My granddad used to have 1 - 2 glasses of whiskey and ginger a night but I'd harldy count him as an alcy, in fact he hasn't drunk for years. Personally I'd say that you have a problem where you couldn't face a public event without a drink
