Through her writing, Michelle is proud to continually raise awareness about the 6 types of alcoholics of addiction and share hope for the future. She lives next to the ocean in Massachusetts with her husband, two young children, and faithful dog. Binge drinking is a pattern of drinking that usually involves drinking five or more alcoholic beverages in a sitting for a man or four for a woman. This rapidly raises a person’s blood alcohol concentration over the legal limit of 0.08 g/dL. The largest percentage of alcoholics fall into this group, as NIAAA publishes that 31.5 percent of all alcoholics in the United States fit this subtype. This group is typically in their late teens or early 20s, and either just of legal drinking age or slightly younger. Many young adult alcoholics are likely college students who are away from home for the first time, and who are surrounded by a culture that promotes and encourages excessive social drinking.

As with other addictions, alcohol use disorder can range from mild to severe. Alcohol use disorder or alcoholism is a pattern of ongoing alcohol abuse.

What Should I Know About Recovering Alcoholics?

They are also addicted to cigarettes, opioids, marijuana, or cocaine. They have co-occurring disorders, like depression, social phobia, bipolar disorder, or obsessive compulsive disorder. They are also addicted to other substances, such as tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, or opioids. Spotting the signs of addiction early can be the key to a successful recovery.

Some of the issues of functional alcoholism include that it can cause physical health problems. Another type of alcoholic is known as the young antisocial subtype.

What Is Alcohol Use Disorder?

With the development of better measurement techniques and research methods, however, empirical research on typologies gained momentum. Several studies using this approach indicated that alcoholic subtypes defined by single dimensions could indeed be differentiated in predictable ways on a variety of other dimensions . The study also demonstrated, however, that various typological criteria other than gender—such as psychopathology, sex-linked physiological characteristics, and socially defined gender roles—could better explain these differences.

Habitual inebriety begins as a “voluntary indulgence” that eventually crosses the line between the physiological and the pathological, resulting in a deterioration of physical and mental abilities. Both habitual and periodic inebriety may manifest themselves in different ways, leading to a further classification of inebriates as social and unsocial. Social inebriates drink openly with other drinkers, whereas unsocial, or solitary, inebriates shun the company of others and tend to drink secretly, often because of “neurasthenia” (i.e., exhaustion of the nervous system).