721158

Hi.

How do you describe an Alcoholic? Is someone who drinks alot but doesn't get aggressive an alcoholic? For me, I believe that an alcoholic is someone who doesn't have the willpower to stop after drinking 3 pints..

Apologies if this is a stupid qn but its something I regularly think about..

cyberwolf

In my opinion an alcoholic is someone who no longer controls alcohol, alcohol controls them, they do not have to be violent, aggressive, the clown at the party, the down trodden homeless person, the high flying businessman who drinks at lunchtime, the person who commits crime.(they can be all or none of these things) They just simply are controlled by the alcohol they drink. They think about how where and when they will have their next drink.

I have no idea what the real definition is but that in my opinion is a simple explanation of an alcoholic.

GlassPrisoner

Will power ? That's a myth, get it out of your head. We have more will power than most of the general public.

An alcoholic is one who cannot stop drinking once they take a drink. An alcoholic also cannot stay away from that first drink for any considerable period of time. An alcoholics life revolves around alcohol, always thinking when and where the next drink will be.

CarolD

An alcoholic is a drinker who no longer processes
alcohol correctly because of their brain and liver enzymes.

Please read this link for more info...

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...influence.html

If alcohol is causing you problems...any type of problems
quitting is wise even if you are not an alcoholic.

Take care...

SaTiT

for me
An alcoholic is a person that drinks to live..wheahter it be 2 pints or 3 gallons.
or a person that's allergic to it..all it takes is one stink from a bee to kill ya..
but the process takes longer with alcohlism sometimes years, sometimes
decades..so..there's a opinions and what have ya..that's the cunning part of it.

here's an analogy...freaken people go to work all the damn time when
they're sick passing on the damn flu or cold..

If all I had to do was stop drinking in recovery...I belive I would have
graduated a long, long, time ago.

GrouchoTheCat

These are my beliefs,

Alcoholic:

One who has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. This genetic programming, once activated by the ingestion of alcohol, causes permanent changes in the way a person's body processes alcohol, including the liver, the cells and especially the brain chemistry.

Paradoxically, the alcoholic receives caloric energy from alcohol and therefore the drug not only makes them feel great, it gives the alcoholic energy. It is the only drug that is also a food. The alcoholic body processes alcohol more efficiently than non-alcoholics allowing the alcoholic to drink a great deal of alcohol and still function normally. The alcoholic may be functional for many years. A major characteristic of alcoholic drinking is the inability to control the intake. The alcoholic may be able, by the incredible application of willpower, to control his or her drinking for a long time but eventually the ability to control the amount of alcohol ingested will be lost. It is usually during these struggles that the alcoholic begins to realize that something is very wrong.

At some point, so much damage has been done to the alcoholic’s system that severe problems begin to manifest themselves. These problems are physical, mental, and spiritual in nature.

Unfortunately, by the time the disease is usually diagnosed, a great deal of damage has already been done and the alcoholic may not be able to safely discontinue the intake of alcohol without medical assistance.

I just finished reading “Under the Influence”, and the updated “Beyond the influence”
And I highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in the disease process of alcoholism.

If you are having trouble controlling your intake of alcohol, please educate yourself and seek help.

Just the personal opinion of someone who has done years of field research,

Ted

Budfrog

Alcoholic = Addict
(just cutting out the carp !!)

Peter

Someone who has a physical dependency and who's life has been made unmanagable by alcohol.

Carol87

I struggled with I AM ~~~ I AM NOT an alcoholic for a very very long time ... finally someone got so sick of listening to me, I was told to read a certain page in the Big Book ... which was MY answer ...

"Could I be an alcoholic without some of the hair-raising experiences I had heard of in meetings? The answer came to me very simply in the first step of the Twelve Steps of AA. 'We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.' This didn't say we had to be in jail, ten, fifty, or one hundred times. It didn't say I had to lose one, five or ten jobs. It didn't say I had to lose my family. It didn't say I had to finally live on skid row and drink bay rum, canned heat or lemon extract. It did say 'admitted I was powerless over alcohol; that my life had become unmanageable.'

Most certainly I was powerless over alcohol, and for me, my life had become unmanageable. It wasn't how far I had gone, but where I was headed. It was important to me to see what alcohol had done to me and would continue to do if I didn't have help." - excerpt page 379, Alcoholics Anonymous, Third Edition; page 354, Fourth Edition

GrouchoTheCat

This is the definition presented on page 46 of "Beyond the Influence", Katherine Ketcham and William F. Asbury (with others).

Quote

Alcoholism is a progressive neurological disease strongly influenced by genetic volunerability. Inherited or acquired abnormalities in brain chemistry create an altered response to alcohol which in turn causes a wide array of physica, psychological, and behavioral problems. Although environmental and social factors will influence the progression and expression of the dease, they are not in any sense causes of addictive drinking.
Alcoholism is caused by biochemical/neurophysiological abnormalities that are passed down from one generation to the next or, in some cases, acquired through heavy or prolonged drinking.

Surlyredhead

When I knew with every fiber of my being that I would regret drinking that day...and did it anyway......everyday, I knew I had a problem...and still didn't quit for 5 more years!!!!

Tazman53

What is an alcoholic?

I am!

I have not drank for over 8 months, but I am still an alcoholic.

If I have one drink, before I am finished I want another drink, then another, and another.

I reached a point where I was physically addicted to alcohol, I had no choice but to drink, I am no longer physically addicted to alcohol, but being an alcoholic all I have to do is have one drink and I am right back where I was a little over 8 months ago.

I am powerless over alcohol, if I have a drink I have no power over the immediate craving for another drink, even though I may not have another drink I am going to be wanting another!

I can attest to the fact that alcoholism is one of the rare diseases that one of the symptoms is the denial of the disease.

I lied to myself all the time.... before I reached the point of having to drink every day I would tell myself "Well shoot I have gone 4 days with out a drink, I don't have a problem, I will just reward myself with a 6 pack!"

Normal people do not think about alcohol!

Normal people are not thinking about drinking Friday night on Monday!

Normal people do not plan ahead "I will only have 2 drinks tonight."

Normal people can get up and walk away from a half full drink and not think a thing about it.

bye_bye_vodka

^^^ Good point...we all suffer from alcohl"ism" not alcohol"wasm".

I always knew I had a problem, but I finally did something when I planned every waking minute on how, when, where I was going to have it.

fraankie

just had to rsvp

"bye bye vodka"
what a cool screen name

chip

I am an alcoholic.

I have a physicial allergy to alcohol. The reaction is a strong physicial craving when I ingest it. I am sober now, and I am only safe from this allergy if I abstain from alcohol.

I also have a mental obsession with alcohol. This obsession is triggered by ingesting it, but it can be triggered at any time. My subconsious mind has been trained to drink like an alcoholic. Random impulses from my subconsious work their way into my consious mind at times. These impulses can trigger a thought about drinking, even though it's the LAST thing I really want to do.

I was physicaly dependent on alcohol. Before I quit, I couldn't go more than 2 hours without a drink. When I quit, I went through a physical withdrawal.

When I drank, I had no real guarentee of how much I'd consume. When I tried to control my drinking, I didn't enjoy it. When I enjoyed it, I certainly wasn't controling it.

I would drink at times when a rational person would abstain. I drank to change how I felt because I didn't like how I felt. I used alcohol to achieve certain objectives. It's always been more than a beverage for me. It was my medicine. I loved alcohol, and I loved what it did for me. I could feel the effects of the first sip. As soon as I had that first sip, I could feel it in my fingertips and all throughout my body. It was electric.

I didn't feel right until I had my first drink of the day. When I had my first drink of my life, I felt like I'd found a part of me that I was missing. Alcohol was a magic potion that made me ok. It was the solution to all my problems.

At some point, alcohol turned on me. I ended up drinking every day, with at least two blackouts a week. In the end, I drank even though I didn't want to drink anymore.

The program of AA is teaching me how to live with my condition.
chip

sunkensky

"I could feel the effects of the first sip. As soon as I had that first sip, I could feel it in my fingertips and all throughout my body. It was electric."

Oh, wow. I've never heard that feeling described before, but that's what it is. It kind of feels like my whole body breaths when I drink my first sip.

"When I had my first drink of my life, I felt like I'd found a part of me that I was missing."

That's so interesting. I was going to create a post kind of addressing this idea, but I couldn't put it to words. Sort of like...being born an alcoholic or a person with alcoholic tendencies it seems like the thought structure is always there, like one is born looking for a missing something. As a kid, it seems like I naturally took to searching for a substance as a way of coping with emotions even before normal avenues of coping, like I was sort of hardwired to work that way. It's just a theory, though, and not being able to put it to words I couldn't google. It occurred to me that the alcoholic child, before even encountering alcohol will be involved in unorthodox ways of stimulating his/her brain and coping with his/her emotions. Does that make sense? Anyway I had my first drink fairly young (about 11 years old...) and until recently didn't see that as a strange thing. I thought that was a normal progression in every kids life.

When I was a kid I used to steal alcohol from adults in the house, drink a little bit when I was home alone...I thought this was absolutely to be expected.

I'm not sure if that came across properly.

Tazman53

sunkensky it came across well, I was quite old when I had nmy first drink, I think I was 12, I did not have any problems with alcohol until I was in Junior HS when I got suspended from school for 5 days for getting drunk on a field trip. At the time I thought I was cool because I was the only kid I knew that got suspended for drinking at that age.

Alcohol was like a lover for me, when I found her I constantly longed for that feeling she wrapped me in starting with that first sip, she was my lover for 40 years.

Brett Ashley

This is a very interesting question: What is an alchoholic.

Because I think there is not only one definition, or diagnosis. I grew up around alchoholics, and I was not like them. I thought that since I was different, then I was not an alchoholic, and when my drinking-related problems elated later in life, I was still not an alchoholic, because you have to have had the symptoms from the start, right? And if your'e not an alchoholic in the strict sense, then you don't have to quit drinking, right?

Not so.

And what I thought would never happen to me, indeed happened to me. Alchohol plays a big role in my life, even if I don't drink, and I have a hard time controlling it (I can certainly not control it if I let myself have the smallest drink).

So people may say that this is not really being an alchoholic, but for me it's a problem, whatever you choose to call it.

Debaucher

This goes back to that whole idea of the "REAL" alcoholic. I didn't end up where I had to have a drink at 3:00 AM to sleep the rest of the night (yet)... I didn't drink in the mornings to stop the shakes (Yet)... I didn't drink every day (oh yeah I did)... I didn't have to have it (so I tell myself)... I have better will power now I could moderate (tried that it didn't work)...

I'll take your definition... but I don't think it is willpower...

Will power is the ability to finish a 1/2 marathon with little or no training... and so much pain that you cry from physical pain when you cross the finish line...

Will power is the ability to teach yourself computer programing and get a job doing it...

Will power is cleaning up somebody elses puke...

Will power is loosing weight (over 100 lbs if you count what I gained back the alst time I went on a 3 month eating binge... )

Will power... I dont' think it is a matter of will power... I think it becomes out of my control... if I could will it I would have... I loved drinking... if it was a matter of will power I would have done it... I did all those other things...

There is an old guy at the AA meeting I go to who says...

Will power... huh... try will power when you have diareha!

best description I have heard of the compulsion to drink once I have had one...