Originally Posted by
Hawks 
It might help you to read the doctors opinion in the book Alcoholics Anonymous.
He worked with 40,000 people who had alcohol problems from the mild to the wild.
He draws the distinction between what he terms hard drinkers and real alcoholics or alcoholics of the hopeless variety.
My guess is your AH is a hard drinker.
One day when his doctor gives him a warning severe enough, he will just quit drinking.
Dr Silkworth saw many of these types.
They are often confused with alcoholics of the hopeless variety.
But they aren't.
It's actually quite good news.
THIS ^^^
Dude, you can't diagnose whether someone is or is not an alcoholic because they take their medications. That the whole point of my story - nor can you determine and offer hope that if an alcoholic or "hard drinker" is told that if they don't quit drinking and they will die that they will quit just because they are responsible about managing health issues. There are countless threads on here of the spouses/partners/children/friends of A's whose A was told if they didn't quit drinking they would die and they didn't quit, and some do quit. Mine did eventually - like 8 years after the first time he was told. He has multiple health issues due to alcoholism, takes his meds and goes to his doctors regularly yet relapsed with chronic pancreatitis and diabetes due to alcoholism because he is an addict and lost his recovery system. That he quit doesn't place him in the "hard drinker" category.
I was not with him during that time (first go round I was with him during relapse). I know that no one believed he would ever quit. I know that his mother had come to grips with "the phone call" that was inevitable that he was dead. Yeah, I would call that incorrigible. I would say yes, they felt he was hopeless.
There is certainly much to learn about studies of addicts and their behavior. One of the things I learned on here, best quoted by member Pohsfriend, is that one size fits one. The disease is baffling and inconsistent in real life. Illogical. Sadly, more often than not the addiction wins.
Its really easy to understand someone's history by reading their threads and posts. You did not upset me btw.