Problem Drinker

Among his several contributions to our knowledge of alcoholism is that the remarkable list of signs and symptoms of what constitutes a “problem drinker,” a phrase coined by Dr. Durfee and that he uses in place of alcoholic. Some critics of Dr. Durfee aver that “problem drinker” could be a Victorianesque euphemism for an economic elite that cannot abdomen the tough truth of “alcoholic.” This is often not the case. Dr. Durfee explains that ” ‘chronic alcoholic,’ in law, in criminology, and in sociology, has assumed a robust suggestion of ethical stigma.” There’s no doubt of it. With Alcoholics Anonymous, we have a tendency to believe that no stigma ought to be hooked up to the term. Each effort ought to be created to purpose out the patent absurdity and ignorance of such a stigma in managing a disease. For just because the diabetic cannot live while not insulin, so the alcoholic cannot live with alcohol.

Dr. Durfee’s reasons for coining the term, problem drinker, rather than bucking this, were motivated by therapeutic experience. He found in treatment of “alcoholics” that this suggestion of “weakness and ethical unfitness could do serious psychological harm to patient and therapist alike in discussing the problems posed by alcohol.” Dr. Durfee defines the matter drinker as “a person in whose life drink overshadows, threatens, or has already destroyed what we have a tendency to consider traditional living.”
The first of Dr. Durfee’s eight signs and symptoms is “to draw a blank”—that not uncommon expertise in that, once a bound variety of drinks, the drinker is intoxicated however maintains consciousness, apparently conscious of what he is saying and doing, only to remember nothing whatever of what he has said or done the subsequent day. This occurrence could be a definite sign of physiological changes happening within the drinker. Dr. Durfee calls the second sign “further-curricular drinks.”

This takes several forms, like “pantry drinking” at parties; feeling the requirement for “a fast one” before the party or the meeting; or feeling that the drinks are too weak or served with too nice an interval between them. These are all indications of the “incipient problem drinker.”The third sign is “an unwillingness to speak concerning liquor as a problem in his life,” and “a readiness to accuse friends and family of imagined slights and wrongs.” The fourth is “rationalization.” In the beginning this takes the shape of finding all types of excuses for taking a drink. “When rationalization is carried over from justifying a few drinks to justifying a succession of drinks, with no take into accountable period of abstinence, then the acquainted mental pattern of the matter drinker has taken shape.” “Unwillingness to attend conferences, dinners, and social functions where liquor isn’t served,” the fifth sign, indicates “that alcohol has lost its true relative price to its victim.” At this stage “the prospect of a drink is additional pleasing than any alternative aspect of a celebration, a conference, a day or an hour of relaxation.”