Question by SoandSo: How would you characterize this person’s alcohol problem?
I am asking this in this section to get more answers than I got in the psychology section.

For many years I have referred to my husband as being an alcoholic. He goes on day-long drinking binges on his days off from work – usually twice a week. He frequently plans not to drink or to limit how much he drinks, but often is not successful. He generally drinks about a fifth of hard liquor in one drinking episode, maybe a little more. He regularly has ‘blackouts’, does things that upset me and his children, and he has many times spent money on liquor when we needed it for something else. He has every excuse in the book for why he “has to” drink, and half the time the excuses involve something I did wrong. He has been drinking since he was a teenager, and is now 37. Recently, I have started talking to my grandmother about the problem, and she insists he is not an alcoholic and that he drinks because I “let him” and that if I would stand up to him, he would quit. This has become a a major source of contention between her and myself, and I’m getting really tired of her saying he’s not really an alcoholic. She defines “alcoholic” as someone who cannot control their drinking and is physically addicted, loses their job, etc. Her biggest beef is that my husband has gone as long as 3 months without drinking when he was threatened with being kicked out of my sister’s house if he did. But as soon as we were back in our own place, he went right back to drinking. Another thing she always mentions is the fact that no matter how drunk he gets, he will not get behind the wheel because he has had 2 DWIs in the past, and he knows a third would be a felony, so he NEVER does it no matter how plastered.

I define “alcoholism” basically as a progressive illness that begins when someone starts habitually abusing alcohol to ‘escape’ or otherwise cope with some psychological, mental, or other problem in life. This eventually turns into a cycle of alcohol abuse which becomes a stronger and stronger addiction, until the person can’t control it at all, and it can eventually lead to an actual physical dependency, and even death if not treated. I do not consider my husband to be at the stage of chemical dependency, but I most certainly do think he has a psychological addiction to drinking, much the same as a person can get addicted to shopping, gambling, etc. I believe that if some circumstances in his life changed, his alcoholism would become worse, and could eventually progress into that final stage.

Okay, so now here’s my point and my question: she said it so much that I finally decided to look again at the definition of “alcoholism”, since it has been years since I read anything about the subject (we’ve been married 13 years) and I *guess* I could have misunderstood when I was younger, but what I found is that there is really a lot of disagreement among the various authorities about what really is alcoholism – whether it’s an overdrinking habit, or whether it is only the person who has become physically dependent on alcohol. So, my grandmother and i are really just arguing about semantics, and that there are just a lot of different understandings out there about what exactly is an alcoholic. So I ask you, General Public, would you call my husband’s drinking problems “alcoholism”, or what would you call it? Thanks for reading my long question!!
Thanks so much for your responses! I really don’t know why I’m so concerned with her opinion either. She just keeps interjecting it every single bleeping time I bring up his drinking.

Best answer:

Answer by Eva
Sounds Bavarian.

Answer by ruth
I would consider this alcoholism. Your grandmother just wants your marriage to last, so she’s minimalizing the problem. I wouldn’t continue to discuss this with her, she’s not going to change her opinions and they aren’t relevant anyway.

Adding, you’re concerned with her opinion because you need YOUR grandmother to support you and this feels like she isn’t. She really thinks she is, because she thinks this marriage is going to be best for you in the long haul. Will it or won’t it? You know you better than anyone else, even your grandmother. Some women can stand to stay married to alcoholics and I couldn’t.

Add your own answer in the comments!

 

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