In my 37 years of practice, I’ve encountered 4 types of alcoholics:
1 – Social Drinkers have little to no trouble drinking occasionally, usually preferring to drink with others. Their reaction to alcohol is close to harmless. Social drinkers tend to be very confident while drinking, given their moderate to high tolerance plus their lack of a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. Neverthless, when emotional crises hit, the temptation to drink can be stronger for those who don’t believe they have the capacity to go overboard.
2 – Problem drinkers may have some to zero genetic connection to alcohol addiction. They rarely black out, cause public disturbances, or fall into identifiable patterns of drinking. The problem with this group involves their volatile susceptibility to binging when they are consumed by a loss of control over some part of their life. Alcoholism develops during transitional times. Drinkers want to escape seemingly “inescapable” problems at hand or to numb themselves while carrying through hardships.