Alcoholism Recovery & Treatment

no

Yes, absolutely.

There is the term “dry drunk” which is a person with all the mental addictive qualities of alcoholism, but who for one reason or another, doesn’t drink or doesn’t drink to excess. Often they “white knuckle” their way through avoiding drinking to excess, but still have a lot of the mental issues that come with alcoholism. There are alcoholics with extreme self restraint who exhibit all the other qualities of alcoholism, but set limits of two drinks.

Nevertheless, many of these people still end up in AA or other alcoholic support groups because even setting limits can be insufficient remedy for the psychological effects of addiction that go along with so called “dry drunk” alcoholism. (though clearly, these people may not outwardly exhibit the falling down drunk behavior society attributes to alcoholics, the pursuit of alcohol, even in two glass a night rations, can still have deleterious effects for this subset)

Alcoholism is in many ways similar to so many addiction syndromes – the psychology of which is very, very complicated – but often is marked by the so called “cycle of addiction” and “dependency” – which can occur even in the absence of a substance a person is chemically addicted to.

Additionally, alcoholism, and often the so called “addictive personality” is genetically linked, and so a person may “have the gene” but not be aware of their tendency to fall into alcoholism until they start drinking at 21 or whatever age – though there are some psychological indicators that go along with the “addictive personality.”

I included some links for you to review.

The previous comments of “No” clearly do not reflect the orthodoxy of psychological understanding about the idea of addiction or the “disease theory” of addiction.