Quote from: barbie on December 13, 2018, 11:07:15 AM
Of course, it is difficult to define. But the most critical criterion is whether you can maintain your social life without any serious problem from consumption of alcohol. The second is your health condition, such as gamma GTP in your liver.
I know a few acquaintances of alcoholism. One drinks alcohol to relieve depression, but refuses to take prescribed medicine for curing depression, calling people by phone whenever depressed. The second one continued to show hand tremor. Both are addicted to soju, a kind of artificial spirit here.
barbie~~
My two cents - and please forgive me, as I say this not to stir controversy or boast but rather to offer information - is that one can be a very fully functioning member of society and still be an alcoholic.
And yes, anecdote is not the singular of data, but two examples are my father and I. I'm a data scientist. I have to manage teams of challenging nerds, write code, travel widely, sell, and do abstruse math, all the while communicating it in plain English. And I used to drink. A lot.
Dad was a naval officer, rocket scientist, nuclear engineer, a better mathematician than I'll ever be, and a senior executive at an electrical utility for thirty years. Cripes, I can't believe all of that can possibly be true now that I think about it, but I swear I am not making that up.
He also drank himself to death. You know those crappy gallon jugs of cheap wine? He'd start one Friday evening and finish his second by Monday morning. He could slow down enough to make a third jug last until Friday again.
He also must have been made of iron, because he survived cirrhosis, kidney failure, diabetes, and ulcers, all from drinking. Took esophageal cancer, where the cells in your throat rebel from being soaked in booze for too long, to finally finish him off.
But because he was so functional, I had seen that it was possible to drink a lot and be functional, too. I used to put away a handle or two of bourbon a week. No problem at all. Never missed a day of work, though I did miss a few flights because I was concentrating on getting lit up at airport bars.
And yeah, I was drinking addictively. I didn't want to feel trans. I didn't want to feel bipolar. I didn't want to feel.
But outside the shell, it sure as heck looked like I functioned.
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