Am I an Alcoholic? What Your Drinking Habits Say About You

 

Recently I decided to stop drinking for a brief period. I had noticed that, at some point over the last few years, my drinking had switched from weekends only to every day - usually a pint or two of lager or a couple glasses of wine. I would start to feel a little pang of excitement as lunchtime drinks rolled around, and would get that same sense of giddy relief as I poured myself a drink the minute I got home. I have always worried that I had a problematic relationship with drinking, and allowing myself to drink every day has caused a lot of frantic Googling (my forte).

 

According to Dr Daniel Hall-Flavin M.D., M.S., a US based psychiatrist specialising in addiction, someone, like me - who drinks every day but never gets drunk - isn’t broadly speaking an alcoholic. "That level of drinking is within the guidelines of moderate drinking, although I would be concerned about someone insisting on drinking if there are clear evidence based reasons why they should not," he says.

 

About three years ago I stopped binge drinking; it doesn’t sit well with my mental health. So now, when I go out on weekends, I have a few drinks, but never enough to tip me over the edge. Since then, I started drinking less but more frequently, to relax after a stressful day or to reward myself for a good day. But I quickly found that most days fall into one of those two categories, so drinking everyday just became a force of habit.

 

Because I never get drunk I've never really been concerned. Until, that is, I decided to stop drinking for a few weeks. I lasted 16 days and it was far more difficult than I imagined. I got a real aching sensation in my chest whenever the cravings started, and I became grumpy and crestfallen as I watched others around me drinking.

 

I was shocked at how hard I found it, and intrigued about what it told me about my relationship with alcohol. Quick online searches overwhelmingly it told me that I used it as a crutch, which made me consider: Is alcoholism a grey area? And if so, could it be better understood by how positive or negative your relationship with it is, or perhaps the reasons why you drink? Is it about who is more in control, you or the booze?

 

According to Dr Hall-Flavin, it is possible to have an alcohol problem but not have alcoholism. "In the old nomenclature this was called abuse, and was demonstrated in someone who continued to drink despite negative consequences, but did not meet criteria for impaired control. It is possible to have an immoderate drinker who has not lost control over their use, and does not suffer from the negative effects of long-term alcohol use and not meet criteria for alcoholism," he tells me.

 

"A one-sentence definition I was taught years ago has held up well: A person with alcoholism is someone who cannot consistently predict when they drink, how much they will drink, how long they will drink, and what the consequences will be. It is not directly related to quantity, and in that sense is more like a relationship," the expert explains.

 

We’re a society obsessed with reflection. We want to explore, understand and evaluate. So why don’t we deep dive into the drink? Here, three women explore their relationship with alcohol.

 

Laura, 28, marketing manager

 

“Growing up, alcohol was the passport to ‘cool.’ And as a chubby, completely uncool teenager, as soon as I discovered that, I threw myself into it. My friends and I started drinking at 13, which seems insane looking back, and weirdly I was ‘good’ at it. Probably because I was bigger than everyone else I could handle my drink more, but I noticed this impressed people. As I got older I’d often get complimented on ‘drinking like a guy’ and I liked that drinking loads helped me feel part of a group of guys in the pub I worked in.

 

Then I went off to university and carried on with all the things I used to do – doing five shots of tequila, drinking until I passed out and/or cried – all behaviours which during uni were seen as totally normal. But, actually, my mum had died a year earlier and I was not handling it well. I was using alcohol as a way to reach the emotions pushed deep inside of me. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time and just figured I was a big drinker, because everyone was a big drinker.

 

Then I moved to London and fell into the party scene, which meant I pretty much drank throughout my entire twenties, almost every day of the week. But as I got older, and more people began to discuss sobriety and our alcohol soaked culture, I began to realise that the way I drank wasn’t very healthy at all (there were a few very shameful nights). Looking into ways to address it, I did lots of reading and began doing sober stints. Initially I’d think I was going to give it up altogether, but then I'd find I missed alcohol. As much as I am aware that there are times in my life I’ve drunk for the wrong reasons, there are also times in my life where I’ve very much drunk for the right reasons – I’ve had lots of fun and it might be irresponsible to say so but alcohol has contributed to that for me.

Now, over the course of about five years and with doing these sober stints, I now can recognise when I am drinking for the wrong reasons. I won’t drink if I’m stressed or had a bad day; if I’m angry or sad about something I try and talk about it instead of drinking through it. I have to think to myself, "Why am I drinking?" before I pour myself a glass, and if it’s for a negative reason I choose something non-alcoholic. I also often start my evening with soft drinks, and then go and have wine or something alcoholic later on.

 

When you think about the world that we live in now – how even things like the cinema is now associated with alcohol, breakfast is associated with mimosas - it's no wonder it's so hard to go sober. It’s all around us. I have had nights out where friends have left early when I said I wasn’t drinking because they felt it wouldn’t be a fun night, but by far the biggest bugbear about not drinking is people asking if I’m pregnant. You’re allowed to want to not drink and take care of your mind and body without having a baby to look after – you have yourself to look after!"

 

Sarah, 33, Physiotherapist

 

"My relationship with alcohol is pretty hit and miss. In the past I’ve definitely used drinking as a crutch but I feel more in control of things now. That said, even last year I had really bad spells of binge drinking, doing awful things and waking up the next day having ruined my life. When I say awful things, I mean legitimately bad things, not funny 'I-booked-a-flight-to-Greece-on-a-whim' kind of things, but getting into a fight with some lad in a kebab shop, getting punched in the face, losing an entire IRL fingernail in the scrap, calling the police, and then my boyfriend nearly dumping me. Then there was the time my friend and I got locked out of a rented holiday flat in Geneva, we thought it’d be a bright idea to smash a window to get in. I then had to pay £1,000 to replace the window and our friendship completely broke down.

 

I’m super conscious of drinking now and almost seem to have gone the other way, where I’m constantly paranoid about getting too drunk and the next day end up crippled with fear that I said or did something horrible. I get the worst memory loss, it’s all very Girl On The Train. I’d say about 65% of my nights leave me more stressed than they were worth. Sometimes I feel so anxious I shake, can barely talk, pledge never to drink again. I wake up with a voice in my head shouting 'YOU ARE A TERRIBLE PERSON' and feel like crying for days.

 

I’ve never considered myself an alcoholic, but there have been times where I’ve questioned if I should be drinking at all or if my relationship with alcohol was healthy, because I constantly took drinking too far. The number of times I've thought, 'Shit, I can’t keep doing this to myself because surely one day my luck is going to run out.'"

 

 Nina, 31, celebrity talent booker

 

"Beer is kind of my one true love. There are few things I look forward to more than holding an ice-cold pint of lager in my hands at the end of a working day, or pre-roast on a Sunday afternoon, or in a beer garden in the height of summer, or the countless times I used to get to the pub early before a 'cripple-me-with-anxiety-why-don’t-you' first date.

 

I’ve always felt like everything is better with booze, right? I’m more fun, my mates are more fun (sorry, it’s true), our lives are simply more fun when (even when just a little bit) inebriated – you wouldn’t catch us doing the Irish jig to B*Witched in one of London’s swankiest cocktail bars while sober, put it that way.

 

Working in entertainment, it’s been my job for the past decade to socialise for work on almost a daily basis – attending gigs, parties, fashion launches and business lunches and dinners to cultivate relationships, all more easily done when there’s alcohol flowing. Free. Alcohol. Flowing.

 

But over the past three years I’ve been feeling a strange on-off guilt about how much I drink. Weeks and weeks can go by where I won’t even have one day off the juice – if I’m not out, it’s that glass of red while watching a movie with my flatmates, you know the drill. In my twenties, the effects all went under the radar. I never got hangovers, could still get up for that 6am gym sesh, and never missed a deadline - even if I’d been out all night at the Brits.

 

And while I always hold it together on the surface (I’ve got a strong Irish tolerance), these days I can suffer huge mind blanks. Entire bits of the night I barely remember, despite friends reassuring me I was acting perfectly normal the whole time. Sometimes it’s when I’ve had the deepest conversations with the most important people in my life, only to wake up the next day and remember very little, if anything. It’s insulting to them and alarming for me – how much damage has drinking done to my brain? Is it irreversible? And what if now I’m thinking about starting a family?

 

I have gone weeks without alcohol in the past and have noticed my confidence increase, my memory approve ten-fold, and my ability to start conversations is actually better – I’m more alert, pay more attention, and am quicker off the mark. I also found I had so much energy I almost didn’t know what to do with it. So why, then, am I now back drinking almost every day?"

 

If you need advice or information about drinking, visit Drink Aware.