The classification system described in this study will have broad application in both clinical and research settings.” A report of the study is now available online in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Before we dive into the how to tell when alcohol is affecting your relationships, let’s first establish what actually defines an alcoholic. The effort was made to categorize different types of alcoholics, partly to dispel the myth that there is a typical alcoholic. The severity of your withdrawal symptoms depends on how long you’ve been abusing alcohol.
What Increases the Risk for Alcohol Use Disorder?
People who fall into the young adult alcoholic subtype also rarely have a family history of alcoholism. Alcoholism is considered to be a heritable disease, as NIAAA reports that genetics can account for about half of the risk for developing the disease. The flip side of this coin, however, is that environmental and other factors make up the other half of the risks for the onset of addiction.
Different Types of Alcoholic Beverages (By Alcohol Content)
The disorder makes a person who has it experience an intense desire for alcohol even when it adversely affects their health. However, referring to a person with this condition as an alcoholic has negative connotations that can be harmful and hurtful. One size does not fit all and a treatment approach that may work for one person may not work for another.
What causes Alcohol Addiction?
Binge drinking equates to roughly five drinks for men and four for women within two hours. However, these numbers can vary depending on your alcohol tolerance and other biological responses. There are three types of alcohol—isopropyl, methyl, and ethyl alcohol. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), moderate drinking is considered drinking two or fewer standard drinks for men daily. To recover from AUD, seeking professional help and attending support groups is essential. Treatment options such as inpatient, outpatient, detoxification, support groups, and MAT can all help those struggling with AUD.
The serotonin levels were reduced in the brains of men with early-onset alcoholism accompanied by violent behavior (i.e., type II alcoholics). Understanding the available treatment options—from behavioral therapies and medications to mutual-support groups—is the first step. The important thing is to remain engaged in whatever method you choose. Ideally, health professionals would be able to identify which AUD treatment is most effective for each person. NIAAA and other organizations are conducting research to identify genes and other factors that can predict how well someone will respond to a particular treatment. These advances could optimize how treatment decisions are made in the future.
- People who fall into the young adult alcoholic subtype also rarely have a family history of alcoholism.
- Kahlua is a popular coffee liqueur made in Veracruz, Mexico with rum, sugar, vanilla bean, and coffee.
- This group also has the highest rates of other substance abuse disorders, including addiction to cigarettes, marijuana, meth, cocaine, and opioids.
- Examples of support groups include Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), SMART Recovery, and Celebrate Recovery.
- A chronic severe alcoholic likely started drinking and struggling with alcohol-related issues and problematic drinking at a young age and is currently middle-aged.
Type II alcoholics often exhibited a reverse personality profile, with low harm avoidance, high novelty seeking, and low reward dependence. This combination of traits also describes people with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) (Cloninger 1987b) and is consistent with findings that type II alcoholics frequently suffer from ASPD (Gilligan et al. 1988). Alcohol is often implicated in exacerbating aggression, and the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) publishes that 40 percent of all violent crimes cite alcohol as a contributing factor. Chronic severe alcoholics suffer from psychiatric disorders more often than other subtypes of alcoholics, including bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders.
More members of this group have full-time jobs than any other, but their income level tends to be lower than the functional subtype. While this group is not especially likely to seek treatment, those that do what is holistic addiction treatment tend to attend self-help groups, specialty treatment programs, detoxification programs, and private health care providers. Young adult alcohol dependents are 2.5 times more likely to be male than female.
Getting help before your problem drinking progresses to severe alcohol use disorder can save your life. Jellinek’s new typology still closely resembled the earlier Bowman-Jellinek synthesis. Mutual-support groups provide peer support for stopping or reducing drinking. Group meetings are available in most communities at low or no cost, weed vs booze and at convenient times and locations—including an increasing presence online. This means they can be especially helpful to individuals at risk for relapse to drinking. Combined with medications and behavioral treatment provided by health care professionals, mutual-support groups can offer a valuable added layer of support.
These classifications have distinguished alcoholism subtypes based on a multitude of defining characteristics, including drinking patterns, consequences of drinking, personality characteristics, and coexisting psychiatric disorders. Despite the variety of determining factors and manifestations of alcoholism and despite the inconsistencies in nomenclature, however, both clinical observation and empirical research indicate that the heterogeneity among alcoholics is not random. As shown in table 2, similar alcoholic subtypes can be categorized within two broad groups, called the Apollonian and Dionysian types, based on recurrent characteristics of the drinkers. This means that, for example, type A alcoholics are basically the same as milieu-limited or delta alcoholics, with some differences between these types resulting from the different methods and defining criteria used to establish the typologies. The differences in personality traits between type I and type II alcoholics led to a hypothesis about the underlying motivation for alcohol consumption in the two subtypes (Cloninger 1987a). According to this theory, type I alcoholics experience a late onset of alcoholism because their high harm avoidance trait initially inhibits the initiation and frequency of drinking.
“Subtypes of Alcohol Dependence in a Nati[…]presentative Sample.” Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2007. “Denial is huge for any alcoholic, especially for a functioning alcoholic, because I, you know, I’m not living under a bridge.
Family members and adults may assume that the young adult will then “grow out of it” and do not see the drinking as a potential ongoing or long-lasting issue. If you or someone you know suffers from alcohol use disorder, seek treatment as soon as possible. These treatment options can help you or your loved one take the first step toward sobriety and live a healthier, happier life.
To understand this complex and unique disorder, it’s essential to learn the different types of alcoholics. It’s also critical to understand their experiences with substance abuse. Of this type, about 76% are male and only 7.6% have received a college degree, although another 13.4% are still in school. Family incomes average around $32,000, the lowest among the subtypes alongside the chronic severe subtype. They have the highest divorce rate — 25.1 percent — of all the alcoholic types.
