Do you have a drinking problem? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Alcoholics keep booze at their desk and drink throughout the day. Highly educated people these days equate imperfection and bad habits with mental illness.

This statement is so untrue and so naive that I can only imagine the poster is trolling or joking. If the latter, it is deeply unfunny because it is thinking like this that keeps many people from seeking help who need it.

I'm being flippant - I recognize that lawyers disproportionately have substance abuse problems. My only gripe is with the recent cultural phenomenon (in some cases present in this thread) where an increasing amount of perfectionists diagnose themselves with an increasing amount of ailments. It's that kind of thinking that has allowed, for example, perfectly healthy young adults to get medicated for ADHD and hooked on stimulants. To stick with the current example, I notice that people with the same sort of personality judge themselves incredibly harshly for behaving in ways (i.e., drinking moderately) that the majority of Americans would consider completely normal.

If you've ever experienced substance use disorder up close and personal, you know that it is just not something to be flippant about. The person who talked about their doctor's view of alcohol being a problem if it creates problems in your life is absolutely correct. There is no number of drinks that captures that -- some people can drink very heavily and not suffer any personal, professional, or financial consequences, while for others those consequences appear after far fewer drinks. Ultimately whether a person's alcohol use is an issue is something that is very personal and often impossible for an outsider to diagnose. I know several incredibly accomplished people who from the outside seemed to have it all -- loving families, successful careers -- who later came to identify as alcoholics or addicts and stopped drinking/using because internally they started to experience negative consequences (and after the fact, you could probably identify some external negative consequences too). So to say someone doesn't have a drinking problem because they only drink x number of drinks y days a week and their concerns about their drinking is just a sign of perfectionism or narcissism really misses the point. It is also dangerous because a lot of people cling to those metrics to avoid getting the help they need.

[Anonymous User]

Alcoholics keep booze at their desk and drink throughout the day. Highly educated people these days equate imperfection and bad habits with mental illness.

This statement is so untrue and so naive that I can only imagine the poster is trolling or joking. If the latter, it is deeply unfunny because it is thinking like this that keeps many people from seeking help who need it.

I'm being flippant - I recognize that lawyers disproportionately have substance abuse problems. My only gripe is with the recent cultural phenomenon (in some cases present in this thread) where an increasing amount of perfectionists diagnose themselves with an increasing amount of ailments. It's that kind of thinking that has allowed, for example, perfectly healthy young adults to get medicated for ADHD and hooked on stimulants. To stick with the current example, I notice that people with the same sort of personality judge themselves incredibly harshly for behaving in ways (i.e., drinking moderately) that the majority of Americans would consider completely normal.

If you've ever experienced substance use disorder up close and personal, you know that it is just not something to be flippant about.

Or perhaps I have, yet I disagree. To each his own.