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You may be reading this not for yourself, but because you have concerns about a member of the family, a friend, or another loved one. It may well be alcohol is not just one of the problems in any given life, it could well be that the problem in life is alcohol. Here are some of the classic warning signs.
Overwrought behaviour while drinking
Ugly, highly charged emotional behaviour during drinking episodes could be a sign of dependency.
Jekyll and Hyde
The alcohol-fuelled “Jekyll and Hyde” syndrome can result in loud, accusatory lecture-type speech tirades, sudden crying outbreaks, the smashing of furniture, and violence.
The setting for such episodes can vary dramatically from domestic occurrences in the home to serious incidents on aircraft. The extreme behaviour is almost always unprovoked. It is usually triggered by the alcohol’s effect on the victim, not by the behaviour of others who happen to be present.
I have met people on several occasions in my life who were so alarmed by the horror of their conduct during and/or after a drinking session, they realised they were seriously affected and opted for an alternative lifestyle and never drank alcohol again.
Non-dependents
Social drinkers (SDs) rarely display nasty behaviour while inebriated. The drunken brawls that occur among young males are an exception. These are more frequent social events (than those of adult SDs) and probably have more to do with crowd psychology and testosterone levels than with alcohol, although the uninhibited effect of booze undoubtedly contributes.
SDs rarely become agitated to the point of rage. When drinking, they are usually more cheerful, and less inhibited than when sober; in the popular apt phrase, they’re ‘happy.’ If they continue drinking, they might fall asleep or get sick – but they don’t start breaking chairs.
Alarmingly, the social drinking scene has shifted over the years and particularly during the last two decades.
When I first attended AA meetings in my early troubled years (the middle 1960’s and early 1970’s), the average age around the table was the 50-60 age group. During the last year of my work in general practice, the average age of my telephone enquiries was 22 years of age in the under 30 age group (the youngest being 14 and the oldest being 30).
The average age of those entering treatment from all enquiries/referrals was 44 years of age. Young people have become more and more likely to succumb than ever before.
Blackouts
These are episodes of amnesia while drinking. It is important to understand the difference between passing out and blacking out.
Passing out is to be unconscious. Blacking out is a state when you appear outwardly normal (if not perhaps a little vague) but have absolutely no knowledge of where you are, what is going on, and later have no recollections of what has taken place during the episode.
Blackouts do not necessarily occur during periods of heavy drinking. More than one dependent (when sober but in-between sessions/binges) has told me a blackout can be triggered by a single drink. However, they are more likely to occur, in my experience, when the victim has been on a prolonged session/binge with little food or nourishment for a prolonged period.
For them to occur during abstinence would be an extremely worrying turn of events, in my view. Blackout episodes can last from a few minutes to several hours or sometimes for much longer periods of time, even for weeks.
During a blackout, the dependent will not necessarily appear drunk and may be capable of functioning at a high level of competency.
Serious mental disturbance
A recovered insurance salesman, looking back on his drinking days, said he had absolutely no recollection of selling the largest policy of his career, and a surgeon who was dependent on alcohol once performed a successful tracheotomy during a blackout. But the scariest blackout story I’ve heard was of an airline pilot whose blackout ended while he was at the controls of an aeroplane. His most pressing problem was to find out – without alarming his companions in the cockpit – exactly where he was supposed to be flying the plane to!
Benders
These are drinking episodes that last two days or longer, and they continue similarly until the late stages of the disease. Non-dependents do not/cannot drink heavily and continually for two days or longer. Bender/Binge-drinking dependents can and do.
Going on the wagon
People with a dependency on alcohol, sometimes try to prove to themselves (and to others) they are not ruled by alcohol through abstaining. They may stay off booze for weeks, or even months, at a time.
These heavy drinkers, who do not see themselves as full-blown dependents, may cut out alcohol to lose weight, or if they begin to feel unwell. But the necessity they feel for temporary cessations may go some way to convince them of a strong indication of total dependency.
The others
Some people inevitably may use more imaginative stratagems.
One female dependent, who was a suburban housewife, voluntarily promised her husband (who had expressed his concern about her heavy drinking) that she would henceforth drink only when entertaining.
Within a matter of weeks, this normally reclusive woman became the most active hostess in the neighbourhood. Dinner party invitations were spewed out to people she barely knew, and to some she couldn’t stand. After a few weeks of this frenzied hostessing, she gave up and returned to her normal pattern of drinking… alone.
Sneaky drinking
This is hard to spot, for obvious reasons. One recovered dependent, a salesman, described a technique he used whenever he had lunch with a group of slow-drinking non-dependents. After the first round of drinks was served, he’d gulp his down and then excuse himself to go to the men’s room. On the way, he’d stop at the bar and have a quick double. After leaving the men’s room, he’d go to the bar again and have a second double. Rejoining his companions with those four extra drinks under his belt, he’d promptly order another round for everyone.
Subterfuge
Closely related to sneaky drinking is the ‘secreting’ (hiding) of booze. Dependents are fearful of running out of their addictive substance. This leads them to stash bottles away in drawers, on closet shelves and, in particular, if they are living with a concerned non-dependent, in odder places such as inside toilet tanks or in the airing cupboard.
Pre-drinking drinking
When invited to a social event, dependents will prepare themselves against a possible insufficient flow of booze, by drinking before they party. As with other drinking symptoms, this is virtually exclusive to people for whom alcohol has taken a firm grip; non-dependents have no desire, and no need, to pre-drink.
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