Alcoholic here.

In my AA we say that alcoholism is a chronic disease. The same as (some forms) of diabetes, you don’t just get rid if it. Its something you can manage but not cure. It lies dormant inside of you the rest of your life.

My mentor (highly successful and 30 years sober) said it nicely: he has an angry tiger inside of him thats trapped inside a cage. One that will surely eat him if it gets out. His job is to keep the tiger in the cage.

Thats what it feels like. Every day. The cravings go down, the thoughts, etc. Self control improves. But the danger lies dormant for us.

As someone who suffered from deep depression, but never alcoholism - the way alcoholism is described by alcoholics always rings true with how I experience (and hear described by others) depression. I am no longer suffering from depression actively; the symptoms of it are essentially gone. But there's life events, certain situations, certain moments of deeper vulnerability, that feel like I might slip back into it.

Surprisingly enough, although there seem to be parallels with how people experience 'life after' both things, I find it curious that alcoholics I talk to often use the "caged animal" metaphor, whereas depressives tend to describe it more as walking "a tight rope" or "at the edge of an abyss" metaphor.

I too have suffered from some serious bouts of depression and self-doubt.

And while I find the steps here laid out really admirable, I struggle to see how to translate the steps to my afflictions.

Closest I can come is to see the impact of failing to trust. Failing to trust myself and trust others. And failing to let myself be vulnerable.

Thanks for mentioning it, sometimes I feel isolated in my experience of walking at the edge of a cliff. It seems like a good portion of my mental energy goes into the daily practice of keeping depression away. But my therapist has kindly explained why it’s chronic and something to manage for life.

What do they consider the threshold for alcoholism?

I.e. how bad was your drinking before you realized you had a problem?

Have some experience with NA but assuming functionally the same, and there isnt a set threshold. If you are unable to stop taking a substance in any circumstance that is negatively impacting you then you are considered and an addict. Whether thats just every Friday night or every day. Its the inability to stop that makes you an addict rather than the frequency. Tbh i didnt get on with it at all, waaay to goddy for me but I appreciate the work they do for people.

I remember a rule of thumb being "if you cannot remember the last day on which you did not have any alcohol, you're an alcoholic". Probably not what AA goes by, but I like the simplicity of it.

if i drink a glass of beer everyday with dinner i am an alcoholic?

Probably not but two maybe. Source: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/c...

Can you stop tomorrow? If so, then no. If you make excuses why you can’t or shouldn’t, or when you try you have physical or psychological problems, then yes.

This is weird - my mother very rarely drinks but she’ll be hard pressed telling you exactly when was the last time time . This doesn’t make her an alcoholic.

Or should you start the rule with ‘you’ve been drinking everyday for a while’?

If can't remember the last time she DID NOT take alcohol, it does make her an alcoholic. Or just an old person with severe memory issues, who shouldn't even live alone at that point.

The clinical American definition is 14 servings per week for men and 7 for women.

Personally, I was what you call a dipsomaniac. Colloquially that is called a binge drinker. I drank 4 to 9 days at a time from morning to night (and night time) without a break. Luckily I only drank like this 7 times in 4 years but I almost died in my last binge.

We see alcoholics of all kind in AA: frequent and a lot, infrequent and a lot, and frequent and little. The frequent and little are the hardest to crack because they have the hardest time with step 1. Now step one is actually comprised of two components: realizing you have a problem (easy for me) and also admitting you were not in control of your own life anymore (hard for me). Its only through doing the 12 step work really arduously, going to meetings and having a great sponsor that I was able to change enough to where drinking no longer ran my life.

You know that that "angry tiger inside you" feeling can go away completely right? That angry tiger is not biological part of who you are, it's a dissociated memory of how you felt when you were a child, which continues to live on in you in the present because you haven't fully processed your childhood feelings. All else being equal, keeping the tiger caged up is better than letting it loose, but you can also heal it so that it goes away completely, which will benefit your life in many ways, most of which are not even related to alcohol. Healing usually requires softening the cage that the tiger lives in bit by bit as you become increasingly able to metabolize him, or cutting the tiger up into pieces and dealing with a piece of him at a time.

I always found this a little odd, even though I understand the reasoning behind it. I think it would be more accurate to say that they're no longer an alcoholic, but "struggle with addiction", or "have addictive tendencies", or something like that. But that's a bit of a mouthful, and in part I think people continue to call themselves alcoholics even when they've been consistently sober is that it's a strong, shorthand reminder that even one drink can send them right back to where they started.

Isn't "alcoholic" defined as a person who "struggles with addiction" to alcohol? I think that makes sense.

I think it's defined as someone who "is addicted" to alcohol.

It's because they know even one casual drink can lead them down the same path they were on previously, so it's a reminder to themselves and others. It might also be something of an absolutionary statement, where they feel guilt for their past "sin" of drinking and feel the need to label themselves à la The Scarlet Letter to atone for their sin and obtain absolution.

Maybe it is can be part of a person's identity. But we don't call people who've quit smoking "smokers", and ex-smokers seem to give up the "smoker" identity even though it's ostensibly a lot cooler than "alcoholic"; "nicotine (or other drug) addict" would seem to be an active rather than prior addiction.

Without trying to make it sound judgemental I know literal dozens of people who stopped smoking and it hardly comes up in conversation anymore - I think I have like 2 friends left who smoke, out of... more than 50%? And several of them smoked for 10 years or more.

Maybe it's because most people don't just randomly are offered cigarettes or because it went from a "50% of the population" to "10% of the population in this age group".

I'm not saying that sober alcoholics are making a big deal out of it, it just feels different - maybe because it is seen as a lot more problematic than being a smoker? Or harder to quit. Or because it's rarer.

There is far less of a psychological component to tobacco than alcohol.

Like someone else said, alcohol is far more in your face each day than other drugs.

Good point - cigarettes are increasingly harder to find, and are banned in many places (restaurants) where alcohol is readily available, and associated with sociability. There even seem to be more marijuana shops vs. tobacco shops (or liquor stores for that matter) in some places, and the former are advertised while tobacco advertising is banned. On the other hand, while smoking may be in decline, I still see (and smell) vaping everywhere.

Plenty of people go out the door after X years then go back in worse states than when they first showed up. Once picking up a drink/drug/whatever, they're off and running again. 10 - 12 are "maintenance" to stave that sort of thing off. There's no end to working 10 - 12. They're a daily practice of continued growth. There's no end point (recovered), recovery continues on (recovering).

It's also a practice to keep everyone on the same level. Everyone is an alcoholic -- otherwise it'd just be a bunch of old farts telling new guys what to do (then hardly anyone would come back).

Alcohol in AA is viewed as an allergy—a lifelong illness. Someone may have recovered and dealt with their fears and resentments. That doesn’t mean they won’t slip back into negative coping mechanisms though.

For an alcoholic, it takes vigilance every day.

I picked up "Atomic Habits" recently, tbh mostly because I've seen it being hyped all over - I was expecting it to be along the lines of "if you just do X for even 5 min every day...", but one of the early ideas that get introduced is that identity can play a big part in how we function with regards to our habits, which resonated with me, and I think is interesting in the context of your question.

The idea is that our sense of identity and image of self shapes our behaviour, subconsciously to a large extent. So if someone offers you a cigarette and you're trying to quit, it can make a difference if you frame it as "No thank you, I'm trying to quit" (I still identify as a smoker, but I'm trying to not do it), vs "no thank you, I'm not a smoker (anymore)".

Applied to defining goals vs parts of identity- not "I want to run every day and compete in a marathon", but "I 'd like to be a marathon runner". Because, in a lot of cases, we want to do something because of the qualities or traits we perceive the people doing it to have.

To me, it sounds good in this context as well - instead "I have to stop drinking" - "I want to be a sober man".

There is a little book called "The Bottlehopper" by Bob Edwards. It provides a great understanding of what being an alcoholic is.

It is AA orthodoxy that one never truly recovers from alcoholism. Many non-AA people disagree. Arguably, the debate is over semantics, not substance.

> Arguably, the debate is over semantics, not substance.

[insert joke about “substance” and abuse here]

Alcoholism is a genetic predisposition and addictive personalities in general probably are too.

>Can you explain why someone who has "recovered" and is no longer suffering the ruinous effects of alcohol in their life still considered an alcoholic?

I've known people with substance abuse problems, some of them recovered and had healthy relationships with substances. Some of them stopped using for long periods but touching the substance again relit the problem just the same as before.

The latter group even sober for decades are still alcoholics (or whatever other substance). There are people for which the problem never goes away, they just manage not to indulge it.