Types of Drinkers

Types of Drinkers

(Adapted from Helping Troubled Families:  A Guide for Pastors, Counselors, and Supporters, by Charles M. Sell, Baker Books, 2002, pp. 38-39.  Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright 2002. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.)

Not everyone who drinks is destined to become an alcoholic and not all people who get drunk are alcoholics.  This description of different types of drinkers will help you to discern if someone needs help.

Light Drinking:  Consuming only one to thirteen drinks per month.

Moderate Drinking:  What is moderate for men is not for women because of body size and the difference in how the genders process alcohol.  For men it is an average of two drinks a day based on the standard amount of alcohol per drink.  The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture suggest a standard drink contains 0.5 ounces of alcohol—which would be 12 fluid ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, and 1.5 fluid ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits.  Moderate drinking for women is considered to be an average of one drink per day.  Moderate drinking is not considered a health problem; some studies even suggest it is a health benefit.

Heavy Drinking:  More than fourteen drinks per week or four drinks in one sitting for men; and more than seven drinks a week or three drinks at one sitting for men; and more than seven drinks a week or three drinks at one sitting for women (drinking over this amount puts a person at risk for adverse health affects).

Hazardous Drinking:  An average consumption of twenty-one drinks or more per week for men (or seven or more drinks per occasion at least three times a week); and fourteen or more drinks per week for women (or more than five drinks per occasion at least three times a week).  These amounts place individuals at risk for adverse health effects.

Harmful Drinking:  Harmful drinking occurs when alcohol consumption has caused physical or psychological harm.  This is determined if there is clear evidence that alcohol is responsible for such harm, the nature of that harm can be identified, alcohol consumption has persisted for at least a month or has occurred repeatedly for the past year, and the individual is not alcohol dependent.

Alcohol Abuse:  This is a classification in the American Psychiatric Association’s fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM-IV-TR.  The abuser experiences one or more of the following alcohol-related problems over a period of one year:  failure to fulfill work or personal obligations, recurrent use in potentially dangerous situations, problems with the law, and continued use in spite of harm done to social or personal relationships.

Alcohol Dependence:  This is also a classification in the DSM-IV-TR.  The alcohol-dependent person endures three or more of the same problems as the one who abuses alcohol (listed above) but also has a physiological dependence on alcohol evidenced by tolerance or symptoms of withdrawal.  Tolerance occurs when the drinker’s body does not react to the alcohol as it did at first; it later takes more to achieve the same effect, which may account for these persons increasing their dosage.  Withdrawal includes various symptoms:  sweating, pulse rate increase, hand tremors, insomnia, nausea, hallucinations or illusions, etc.  Some who have a tolerance for alcohol doe not experience withdrawal.

Heavy, harmful, and hazardous drinkers are considered problem drinkers, but drinkers in the latter two categories—abuse and dependence—are considered sick according to the medical model.