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Problem Drinker Vs. Alcoholic

21 Mar 2023 · 1 min

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Amber Hollingsworth explains that the difference between a "problem drinker" and an "alcoholic" is largely one of time and disease progression. She argues alcoholism occurs in stages (analogized to cancer stages), warns against dismissing early problematic drinking as "not alcoholic," and urges early acknowledgment and action to prevent severe, hard-to-reverse late-stage addiction.

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The only difference between a problem drinker and an alcoholic is time. You see, most people think that there's people that have alcoholism and then everybody else. As in, like, you're an alcoholic or you're not an alcoholic. That's not actually the way that it works. Alcoholism happens in stages, and one of those stages includes problematic drinking. Just like there are stages of cancer, there are stages of alcoholism. Now, if you went to the doctor and they said that you had stage two cancer, you wouldn't walk out of there and tell yourself and all your friends and family that, oh, it's just stage two. I don't really have cancer. You would walk out thinking, holy crap, I have cancer, and I better do something about it before it's too late. It's actually the same thing with drinking and alcohol. The problem is, is that people don't want to acknowledge that it is actually an alcohol use disorder until they get to, like, that stage four terminal level. But once you get to that level, it's really difficult to turn the ship around. So instead of telling yourself, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm just a heavy drinker, you might want to think about, I'm an alcoholic, but I'm catching it early, and I'm going to choose to do something different.