Re:Ask HN: High functioning alcoholism – anyone?
by dm319 on Sunday November 26, 2017 @05:15AM
(#15780244)
There's a lot of chat on this thread about what quantity constitutes alcoholism. Certainly there is a recommended level above which it is likely to cause lasting harm, but another aspect is the psychological addiction, which can be screened for with the CAGE questionnaire:
1. Have you ever felt you needed to Cut down on your drinking?
2. Have people Annoyed you by criticizing your drinking?
3. Have you ever felt Guilty about drinking?
4. Have you ever felt you needed a drink first thing in the morning (Eye-opener) to steady your nerves or to get rid of a hangover?
I think the fact that OP noticed he has a physical detriment due to his alcohol intake is strongly suggestive that he is drinking too much. Whether he has a 'problem' is whether he's willing to admit to himself that this level of alcohol is causing overall harm and reduce his intake.
I have an addiction to procrastination for similar reasons and to similar detriment.
Here's some advice from the English NHS on how to reduce alcohol use:www.nhs.uk/Livewell/alcohol/Pages/Tipsoncuttingdown.aspx
the problem of talking about addiction is that you can be causing severe harm well before you have a physical dependency.
Harmful drinking is over 14 UK units per week.
A hospital based medically supervised withdrawal will happen at maybe 20 or 40 units per day.
Obviously there's a big gap in between where harm is being caused but you don't yet qualify for hospital based detox.
Help for problem drinking can be hard to access, and the evidence base for some of them are not great.
But for this kind of harmful drinking it's important to get help to cut back now, before it develops into dependent drinking.
Some things you can try: only buy wine on one day a week. Start by only buying two bottles. Ration those out. Have a calendar, and mark out when you're going to drink alcohol.
Switch to lower ABV (alcohol by volume) wine.
750ml of 8% ABV wine is 6 UK units.
750ml of 12.5% ABV wine is 9.3 units.
You can find very low alcohol wines too.