Very briefly, for I am busy elsewhere today, I have noticed that a number of contributors declare or assume that there is such a thing as ‘Alcoholism’, and that it has ‘withdrawal symptoms’.

This sort of thing ( like the assumption that ‘addiction’ is an unchallenged medical-scientific concept) illustrates the deep difficulty we are in.

The ‘symptoms’ of ‘withdrawal’ they name seem to me to be mainly those long associated with long-term heavy drinking (delirium tremens, for instance). I think you can achieve these symptoms without any attempt to ‘withdraw’ from heavy drinking. I also have reason to believe that you can be a long-term heavy drinker and not necessarily experience them. It is also interesting to see how much of the literature surrounding alcohol ‘withdrawal’ involves the prescription of drugs (including worrying substances such as barbiturates and benzodiazepines, which gives us an idea which way the wind blows on this subject, and why modern medicine, and the modern academy might be so anxious to classify this as a ‘disease’. Follow the money, as they say).

I also note that ‘neuroscience’ and ‘neuroscientists’ are called in aid here. I am fascinated by this term ‘neuroscience’, which is a shrill warning bell to anyone interested in objective scientific study. It cleverly suggests an association with the precise and objective discipline of neurology, but turns out not be the same thing at all. It is not, like its parent river, strictly biological, but trickles away into speculative and subjective streamlets including linguistics, philosophy and psychology ( another discipline which is not half so grand as it sounds).

But let us turn briefly to the expression ‘Alcoholic’ to describe a person, and ‘Alcoholism’ to describe an alleged ‘addiction’ or ailment. I haven’t seen any clear, consistent objective measure for establishing that a person is an ‘alcoholic’. The same goes for detecting the presence of ‘alcoholism’ in the human body. Having myself been accused of being an ‘alcoholic’ after confessing a consumption (now long abandoned, alas) of half a bottle of red wine a day, I am interested in the borderlines of this concept.

Thanks to its polysyllabic grandeur, and the way that it lets heavy drinkers off the hook of personal responsibility, it goes largely unquestioned. But in what way, precisely, is an ‘alcoholic’ different from a person who just drinks too much? Is there any fact which stands in the way of the argument that ‘alcoholism’ is a pseudo-scientific medicalization of a human failing? If so, can someone tell me what it is?