The definition of Alcoholism as published by the Journal of the American Medical Association:
“Alcoholism is a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease is often progressive and fatal. It is characterized by continuous or periodic: impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial.”
Symptoms of alcoholism include:
Craving: A strong need, or compulsion, to drink.
Loss of control: The frequent inability to stop drinking once a person has begun.
Physical dependence: The occurrence of withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety, when alcohol use is stopped after a period of heavy drinking. These symptoms are usually relieved by drinking alcohol or by taking another sedative drug.
Tolerance: The need for increasing amounts of alcohol in order to get “high.”
According to Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism is a two fold disease, a physical allergy plus an obsession of the mind. As a recovering alcoholic and from experience, I can tell you this is true. The allergy being that an alcoholic’s body reacts differently than a non-alcoholic. As for the medical specifics of what this means, I’m neither qualified nor quite understand this myself. However, I heard something from a movie that helped put the allergy aspect into perspective. In the movie, Day’s of Wine and Roses, a friend is describing alcoholism to Jack Lemon and how it relates to an allergy, “How many strawberries does it take to start an allergy? And which one gives you hives? Alcoholism is an illness. It’s pretty hard to diagnose an illness until you’ve got it.”
The treatment for alcoholism is complicated yet must begin with the abstinence of alcohol.
One area I do know a lot about is the obsession of the mind. When I review the history of my drinking, the obsession for alcohol started many years before the disease took total control and begin to ruin my life completely. At first it was looking forward to the weekends simply for the purpose of drinking. Then it was 5:00 p.m. (quitting time). No matter what I was doing, thinking about when I was going to drink next became center stage in my mind. But just because I think about drinking does not make me an alcoholic. In my opinion, no one can diagnose someone as alcoholic. But a good indicator is if their life has become unmanageable due to the effects of their drinking.
Checkout alcoholism treatment for more information.