How to Tell if You’re addicted to Alcohol

What Is the Difference Between Social Drinking, Bing Drinking and Alcoholism?

There’s a big difference between someone who drinks socially, bing drinks, and an alcoholic. With normal drinking, you basically use alcohol to the extent where your body isn’t physically dependent on alcohol, but bing drinking does. With alcoholism, not only is your drinking causing problems in your life and health, but you also struggle with physical addiction symptoms when you don’t drink alcohol.

To help clarify, here are some warning signs of both.

Problem Drinking
You (or a loved one) might be struggling with problem drinking if alcohol:

• Causes you to isolate yourself from friends and family.
• Causes you to miss important functions like work or school.
• Makes you angry or violent or feel depressed.
• Compels you to make unsafe decisions like driving under the influence or engaging in unsafe sexual behavior.
• Creates financial problems because you spend money you don’t have.
• Interferes in your relationships with friends and family.
• Causes you to experience blackouts.
• Prompts you to do something that’s not legal.

Alcoholism
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines alcoholism by the following categories:

• Tolerance: You have to consume more and more alcohol for you to get drunk or feel buzzed
• Physical dependence: Once you develop a tolerance to alcohol, you will experience withdrawal symptoms when you don’t have alcohol in your system or not enough.
• Cravings: You crave alcohol and can’t stop thinking about your next drink until you have one.
• Compulsive drinking: You can’t stop drinking once you’ve started. You can’t have just one alcoholic drink.

Common Symptoms of Alcohol Addiction

Since alcoholism disrupts your brain and impacts your thinking, mood and behavior, it’s considered a mental illness. Therefore, a lot of the characteristic signs of alcoholism involve behavior changes.

Behavioral signs you may experience with alcoholism are:

• You take risks.
  • You put yourself in potentially harmful situations while you drink that could lead to injury like having unsafe sex or driving under the influence.
  • You have a loss of control. You drink more regularly or longer than you intended and can’t cut down or quit drinking despite wanting to.
  • You neglect activities and responsibilities. You allow your drinking to interfere with school, work or family obligations. You might miss school or work or perform your job poorly because of intoxication or hangovers.
  • You prioritize drinking. You spend a lot of time either drinking or recovering from it and find alcohol comes before many things in your life.
  • You continue drinking despite negative consequences. You continue to drink despite the fact alcohol is harming your relationships, causing you issues at work or impacting your health negatively.

Physical symptoms you might experience with alcoholism are:

1. Depression, mood swings, panic attacks or anxiety
2. Experiencing blackouts where you can’t remember what you did when you were drinking
3. Headaches
4. Insomnia or sleeping troubles
5. Appetite changes
6. Erectile dysfunction
7. Memory loss
8. Chronic fatigue
9. Itching (related to liver damage caused by alcohol abuse)
10. Gastrointestinal issues (diarrhea, upset stomach, bloating, abdominal pain, vomiting, nausea, vomiting blood)
11. Tingling, burning or numbness in your legs, arms or feet
12. Poor balance, falls or dizziness
13. Difficulty concentrating

Signs of withdrawal or dependence include:

• Having to drink first thing in the morning to stop nausea or trembling.
• Having to drink during the night to stop trembling or nausea.

Common withdrawal symptoms of alcohol abuse are:

• Shaking
• Sweating
• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Nausea
• Delirium tremens – In more severe cases you could experience this potentially life-threatening problem that leads to confusion, hallucinations, psychosis and seizures.

Screening Criteria for Diagnosing Alcoholism

There are several types of screening criteria to help doctors diagnose alcoholism. These include CAGE, DSM and WHO Audit.

CAGE
CAGE stands for cut, annoyed, guilty, eye. These terms appear in the questions for this assessment. This is a questionnaire that measures your drinking problem severity. Answering “yes” to two or more of these questions could indicate a problem and you should seek medical help.
CAGE screening questions include:

• Do you ever feel like you need to cut back on your drinking?
• Do individuals annoy you by criticizing your drinking?
• Do you ever feel guilty or bad about your drinking?
• Do you ever drink in the morning to get over a hangover or steady your nerves (eye-opener)?

DSM
If you exhibit two or more symptoms from the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fifth edition) list of criteria, you would be diagnosed as experiencing alcoholism on a mild to severe scale. The severity of your alcoholism is determined by how many symptoms you experience.

• You experience two to three symptoms (mild)
• You experience four to five symptoms (moderate)
• You experience six or more symptoms (severe)

The 11 Symptoms of Alcoholism According to the DSM-5:

1. You take alcohol in bigger amounts or for longer periods than you meant to.
2. You’ve been unsuccessful in or have a persistent desire of cutting down or controlling your alcohol use.
3. You spend a lot of time using alcohol, recovering from alcohol or trying to obtain alcohol.
4. You have a strong desire, craving or urge to use alcohol.
5. Your regular alcohol use results in your inability to fulfill important obligations at home, work or school.
6. You continue using alcohol despite experiencing regular interpersonal or social issues caused or worsened by alcohol’s effects.
7. You give up or reduce important occupational, social or recreational activities because of your alcohol use.
8. You continue using alcohol in situations that are physically harmful.
9. You continue using alcohol despite knowing you have a persistent psychological or physical issue that’s likely a result or worsened by alcohol.
10. You’ve built a tolerance to alcohol either by needing more amounts of alcohol to achieve the desired effect or experiencing a reduced effect when continually using the same amount of alcohol.
11. You experience withdrawal by either experiencing physical symptoms when you don’t drink alcohol or by needing to drink alcohol or take a related substance like benzodiazepine in order to avoid or relieve withdrawal symptoms.

WHO AUDIT

The World Health Organization developed the AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) to identify individuals whose consumption of alcohol has become harmful or hazardous to their health. This is a 10-item assessment that has three questions on the frequency and amount of drinking, three questions related to being dependent on alcohol and four questions on issues alcohol has caused.

Alcoholic Sub-Types

There are various alcoholic sub-types, including:

Adolescents
This sub-type is usually individuals in their late teenage years or early 20s. Many adolescent alcoholics are those who are away from home (college students) and are surrounded by an excessive social drinking culture.

High Functioning
When you think of an alcoholic, it’s likely you have an image of someone whose drinking has caused their life to fall apart, but this isn’t always the case. For some, they can go on and live a perfect “outside life” that includes:

• Home
• Job that pays well
• Social bonds
• Friendships
• Intimate relationships
• Family

These are referred to as high-functioning alcoholics. As a functional alcoholic, you may still be productive and responsible or even be in a position of power or a high achiever, but this “success” could actually cause you to overlook your drinking.

Or, you could be in denial, thinking you have many friends, a great job and are paying your bills, there’s no way you’re an alcoholic. You might think that just because you haven’t lost everything or your drinking hasn’t caused any setbacks, you’re not an alcoholic. But, in reality, you’re not doing just fine. When you drink heavily, it will eventually catch up to you.

Co-Occurring Disorders
Often, when struggling with alcoholism, many also have a co-occurring disorder which is the combination of alcoholism and a mental condition. In fact, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) says 50% of individuals with any type of substance use disorder also have a mental illness.

One of the biggest distinctions between problem drinking and being an alcoholic is the physical dependency. If you’re able to go for a long-time period without having to have a drink, you might not be struggling with alcoholism. But, keep in mind, problem drinking can spiral into alcoholism over time. So if you feel you can’t control your drinking, it’s essential you get help right away before it becomes worse.