Drug and Alcohol Blog

According to current diagnostic guides, alcohol use disorders are split into two categories: alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence, or alcoholism. But recently, an argument has been made for adding a third category classified as hazardous drinking. Hazardous drinking has been defined as drinking more than the recommended amount.
So, what is the difference between alcohol abuse and hazardous drinking and do we really need a third classification on the road to alcoholism?
Finnish studies have shown 5.8% of the population to engage in hazardous drinking. According to the study, men are defined as hazardous drinker if they consume 24 or more alcoholic drinks in a week’s time and for women, the number is 16 or more drinks in a week.  These numbers seem to be high for one person’s consumption in a week and may imply a drinking problem that needs attention, but yet they are classified as hazardous drinking numbers, not alcohol abuse numbers.
If there is a line between alcohol abuse and hazardous drinking, it seems to me that it’s mighty thin and perhaps we’re just better off calling a spade a spade. If a man is regularly drinking what averages to just over 3 alcoholic beverages every day, that’s indicative of a problem, as is a woman consuming just over 2 alcoholic beverages every day.
Micro-analyzing alcoholism is pointless when alcohol abuse, hazardous drinking, and alcohol dependence are all problems that require attention and change. The degree of intensity of attention depends on the severity of the problem, no matter what researchers want to call it or how they chose to classify it.

Everyone probably knows someone who knows someone or heard of someone who is an alcoholic and down on his or her luck, but alcoholism effects many more people that we may know. It’s not the bums on the corner and those who have literally lost everything who have problems with alcohol, but also those who drink every single day without fail, those who have racked up DUI charges, those who don’t know when to stop drinking at a sitting and end up drunk every time, and these are everyday people. We all know them. Perhaps some of us have been them. Generally, I like to classify addiction as the condition which causes life to become unmanageable, but just because someone may drink everyday does not make his or her life unmanageable, right? Surely, this person could skip a day of drinking, but could they skip an entire week of consuming alcohol? What about a month? Even if this person never gets drunk from drinking everyday, it’s still a dependency forming habit and my guess would be that after a year of drinking on a daily basis, it would be virtually impossible for an individual to stop drinking for more than a few days. Does this make him a raging alcoholic? No, this makes him a functioning alcoholic and sometimes, functioning alcoholics are more dangerous than than those who are obvious with their alcoholism. No matter how it manifests itself, alcoholism is a deadly disease and kills from the inside out causing liver failure, organ shutdown and host of other serious health issues. For subtle alcoholism, the signs are hardly noticeable, and the alcoholic seems to have everything in order at home, at work, in his or her relationships, and generally gives no signs of trouble.

There is no science as to why some people are able to remain functioning alcoholics for long periods of time and others cannot hide their alcoholism, and seem to be screaming that there is a problem from the beginning. No matter what kind of alcoholic an individual may be, alcoholism is alcoholism and it’s danger is the same from one individual to the next. Regardless of how functional an alcoholic may be, there are always signs. This is why it is so important to know the warning signs, because to someone akin to these signs, even the most functional alcoholic cannot hide his problems.