Alcohlic or not? what does it really mean?

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So I was just thinking about something and needed to write it down somewhere and get some opinions. So I drink...semi-frequently...sometimes everyday for a week then I might not drink for a couple weeks...or every other day..sometimes 2 beers sometimes 8...I don't feel that it's a problem or that I'm addicted or anything of the sort. I've gone months without drinking at all frequently.

My problem is this. Whenever I drink in front of my family, or people that know I have mental health issues, or tell my psychiatrists I've been drinking, people automatically start calling me an alcoholic! Even if it's just 1 beer! Why is it that because I have mental health issues I'm supposedly prone to be an alcoholic? I apparently "can't control myself"...Is it not possible that I'm just a normal 22 year old college student? I mean damn, all my college friends drink WAAYYY more then I do...I see them consume 10 beers and a couple shots along with smoking some pot or taking some pain killers. It seems to be a common thing for college kids to want to get all messed up. I don't even drink hard liqour or do any kind of drugs though, but 1 beer and I'm an alcoholic....Does that seem fair?

If the whole point of my treatment, meds, and all that jazz is so that I can feel more normal, fit-in, be like everyone else, or whatever...then why do I get treated differently then everyone else about alcohol(amongst other things)? Why does my shrink tell me I'm allowed no more then 2 beers a week(yeah she still doesn't know how much I actually drink LOL)? It makes me feel...weird...and outcasted...labeled...pre-judged...or something...It just all seems like a load of crap...How am I supposed to feel/be normal if I can't do things that normal people do?...What do you guys think? Do I have a problem or are other people being silly?

Hell, me and my cousin went through the exact same thing, he still goes through it. When me and him would drink my parents and his would over exaggerate like they always do and say we have a problem, all the while my brother would be out, getting drunker then i ever did, smoking pot and hash, and lets not forget all the shrooms. Him on the other hand was a "popular" kinda guy, my parents's pride and joy, his friends would even refer to him as Golden Boy.

Me and my cousin, the under-achievers, are the ones that got the s**t end of the stick.


So listen to me buddy, you say you can stop drinking for months and you've done it without any problems? Well that doesn't sound like an alcoholic to me. Have a beer or two, or five or ten or twelve, you're still young, go out and have fun and don't let people tell you who or what you are, that's your decision.

Amen reverend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcholic

I think part of the problem is "what is normal?" I think when you use the term "drinking" it implies a larger consumption of alcohol. Compared to saying "a beer" or "a drink" anyway. If I witnessed you drinking 8 beers, I would suspect you were an alcoholic. 1 or 2 - not really.

I'd also stay away from defining a "normal college kid" as you have. If that's normal (consistant drug & alcohol abuse) I sure wouldn't want to be it. I have better things to do with my time.

It's interesting to me that you experience accusations of being an alcoholic - my mother has claimed that her father was an alcoholic because he had a single drink most evenings. I suspect it was to calm down the activity in his head (he was undiagnosed AS), but as a kid I never witnessed him taking a drink or acting drunk.

I'm AS and I used alcohol to be able to socialize. It was the only way I could do it and I did it from 16-26 . sometimes I just had a few drinks to relax but mostly I would drink until I blacked out because in all honesty their was nothing I wanted more then to shut my brain off for as long as possible(and the suicides failed)

sooo....why do they worry about mental health issues and chemical dependency ? Because there is a proven link that many people with emotional and neurological and psychological issues will self medicate with whatever they find that works. That may not be alcohol for you, it might be speed or heroin which you never allow yourself to try and escape the potential addiction. Point being, even if you have the potential to be an addict, that does not mean that alcohol is your "drug of choice" .

There may be one problem with AS and alcohol...it seems to help a lot of us with socializing...(it helps a lot of NT's too, that's why they came up with those clever little places called ...bars .) What may make some of us more susceptible to eventually abusing it is that we already have anxiety around socializing so it makes it a pretty tempting chemical for us.

Another issue is anxiety and depression...alcohol depresses anxiety(CNS) which feels good . sometimes we want to keep doing things that feel good when we are having the most problems (and can least afford to having a compromised
judgement...the other thing that alcohol does well ). For example...you might not have a problem now, but when you reach a point in your life when you are feeling overwhelmed and stressed, it may seem like the perfect "fix" .

So not saying that people with AS are all going to become raging alcoholics because many of them drink with out any problems...just like NT's but it does make some sense that "some" of us may be prone to more abuse of a substance that appears to help many of us with the one thing we all have in common...social anxiety .

It's also a depressant and if you have issues with that and drink...pretty counterproductive. I think it's a bit like flushing your co-pay don the toilet because those drugs are not going to be as effective .

There are only 3 people who I have told about my Asperger's- but many know about my previous issues with meth. So when I drink they tend to look at me like, "Here he goes again..."
The trouble with the Western mentality is that we are an all-or-nothing country. You are either an alcoholic or you never drink; you are either a "druggy" or you've never taken drugs.
When I was doing meth I admit to going pretty heavy for a while. I haven't done meth in years- I quit one day and never really cared to look back. But I still have a couple beers every now and again- sometimes as much as 18 in a weekend, sometimes none.

I've had this conversation with my mother before. In my opinion - you can define an alchoholic by how much they need alchohol. Not by how much they drink. It's an addiction.

Eg if you can't eat a meal without drinking a beer, or if you need to have a small glass of wine when you get home from work to relax - you might be an alchoholic.
If you occasionally drink 6 beers just for the fun of it or at a party or ect, but not because you needed to, I would not define that as alchoholism.

(Numbers are random to make a point that its not about the quantity. As a general rule 'alchoholics' do drink a lot but I don't feel that this is what defines them.)

What an alcoholic is, is in the eye of the beholder. I used to drink too much to cope with my mood and went to AA meetings for a while. I do not agree with what they consider an alcoholic to be. There were people in those meeting who I did not think were alcoholics. Here is my definition: If you constantly drink too much and need to drink to get drunk you are a compulsive drinker. If you are someone who is physically addicted to alcohol and need to drink to stop the shakes, you are an alcoholic. AA to me is almost like a cult. When you join they convince you like hell that you are an alcoholic. There is no middle ground with them. You aren't someone who "sometimes drinks too much". You must be an ALCOHOLIC. They say if you are an alcoholic, you will always be one. That is total BS. Some people who go through very tough times in their life may drink excessively to cope. But then when their life goes better they may return to just casually drinking or not drinking at all. AA tells you to stay away from anyone who drinks because the say it will cause you to relapse. You must get rid of all your old friends and only be friends with sobers, (ie. others in AA). That seems very cult-like to me which is why I left AA. Sometimes I still drink too much, but usually I can have just a couple of drinks and leave it at that.

I agree with what others have said about alcoholism being about whether or not you need alcohol and are physically addicted to it as opposed to using it as a 'tool' to cope with the perception of 'regular reality'. I have used booze since I was 13 (now 62) in large quantities daily in order to slow my mind down so I could communicate at a 'normal' level. I can go without booze for months on end when I'm left alone to just enjoy being normal as I call it. You need to get away by yourself for a length of time and actually see if you still have a craving to get drunk just for the sake of doing it and then decide what to do about it.
Booze really disrupts thinking so if you want to enjoy your thoughts it's best to do it 'dry'.

Thanks guys...This has been helpful...pretty much everything most of you are saying is about how I feel. I really don't think I have a problem but I get tired of getting labeled that way. But since I don't drink on a constant basis, I don't shake when I stop drinking, etc...I don't think it's a big deal...Most of the time I drink to relax, calm my nerves, loosen anxiety, sleep, etc...i like to sit around and drink 4 or 5 beers and watch a comedy every now and again, laugh hysterically and slober all over myself...I don't personally see anything wrong with that but my dad is the biggest one that's always ragging on me. He says things like well, if you can't have just one and you like to drink alone, you dirnk more then once a week, you're an alcoholic....It's like BLAH! I'm not addicted...I just enjoy it occasionally...anyways............

Maybe you need to print out a copy of correct information in Dxing alcoholism to educate your father on what the "experts"
who work in the field define it as . He is working with some very "old school" deffinitions on alcoholism and you might learn something as well . I personally think that what makes someone an alcoholic is when it creates more negatives in your life then it does positives....I had to become homeless before I decided it might not be good for me but I am a bit "slow"

No. I'd say you're definitely not an alcoholic. I used to buy one of those 1 gallon bottles of Vodka and I'd go through in about 3 days. I drank like that for 3 years strait. If I ran out and I didn't have the money to buy vodka? Look out. I'd start getting the shakes, I'd become more paranoid, overwhelmed, sweating...yeah. I was definitely an alcoholic. But you? Drinking the way you do doesn't make you an alcoholic. What makes you an alcoholic is when you DEPEND on it.

i agree with the recent posts, there's no specific
number when it comes to defining whether one's
an alcoholic or not

This thread makes me want a nice pint of Guinness.


(And you don't sound like an alcoholic. People are just weird.)

Just because you tell them, because people think drinking is a normal habit, so telling it may appear for them as you have an unusual consumption.
My dead grand-pa was alcoholic, he used to drink a lot more than you, don't worry, you're not alcoholic

I don't like diagnosing people over the internet, so I can't tell you whether you're an alcoholic or not. But I consider myself a recovering alcoholic, and there might be some things about my drinking history that may ring true for you.

I never drank every day (except for the two weeks proceeding my giving up of alcohol altogether). I never had a craving for it, and I never went through any kind of physical withdrawal (though coming into contact with my actual emotions was pretty intense). The same thing happened with cigarettes, by the way--I chained smoked 2-3 packs a day for four years and gave it up with no physical withdrawal at all. I don't understand why I don't go through physical withdrawal, but I don't.

Here are the two things *for me* that defined alcoholism--and this is how I define it, not necessarily how you or anyone else should:

1. I have never, ever had just one drink. When I started drinking, I could not stop. I always drank to get drunk, and I always binged. These binges would last an evening and into the early morning and I'd wake up dehydrated and not drink again for a week or a month or several months. But I know that if I started with one drink, I'd be going until I passed out. So I don't drink anymore at all. It's been over 20 years.

2. I can clearly remember the day I stopped drinking. I was standing in my apartment and admitted to myself that I would like nothing more than to drink and get high every single day for the rest of my life. And then I thought, well, if I do that, I'd be throwing away everything I'd worked so hard for: my education, my work, my healing, everything. I was at a crossroads. And I stopped. Just like that. And I never looked back. But seeing how much I wanted to be altered scared the s**t out of me. Scared me straight, I think.

I hope this helps in some way. BTW, I've got serious problems with AA, haven't been to a meeting in ages, and feel no need to. I never related much to the people there, and much of the program is too pseudo-Christian for my taste.