Are you an alcoholic or just addicted to drink?

Declan Lynch’s tales of addiction

Ishould probably set aside about six months of this column solely for an examination of that recent BBC documentary Drinkers Like Me, presented by Adrian Chiles. Regular readers who saw the programme will know that it touched on many areas which we have visited on these outings, while somehow managing to draw entirely different conclusions.

At its heart, there was this magnificent line, uttered by a great mate of Chilesy’s who also loves a drink, that “we’re addicted to it, without being alcoholics”.

There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, as it were, but it must also be said that there are 50 ways and more, much more than this, to stay with your lover — even if, like Chilesy, you have started to question that relationship.

Chilesy found a way to stay, as you always felt he would. However hard it is to declare yourself an alcoholic in real life, it must be so much harder when you sense that there is this phenomenal lack of awareness out there among the ‘general public’ — the same ‘general public’ on whom you are most reliant for approval if you happen to be a top BBC presenter.

I was only recently pointing out here that the word ‘alcoholic’ still has such drastic connotations for anyone who hasn’t really thought too deeply about these issues — which is just about everyone — you don’t want people to get too fond of labelling you in that way.

But for anyone — be they famous or totally unknown, or anywhere in between — perhaps the biggest problem with that word, is that it leaves you with very little wriggle room. You’re an alcoholic? You need to stop drinking.

If however, you’re just “addicted to alcohol”... well... maybe that can be... managed? Maybe you can cut down a bit, so you don’t lose that wonderful feeling of liberation that comes with the first couple of drinks?

Certainly that was the conclusion which Chilesy reached at the end, as he devoted himself to a new regime of more ‘mindful’ drinking, perhaps devoting too little attention to the fact that drinking can make you a little drunk, which in turn can make you less mindful than you were when you started. Indeed, if anything it tends to make you mindful of your desire for more drink.

Nor did he go too deeply into that vital distinction, as his mate saw it, between being addicted to alcohol and being an alcoholic — I mean, is there really any difference, when you get right down to it?

If someone says that they’re addicted to cocaine, or to food, or to sex, it is usually recommended that they embark on a programme of recovery not unlike that which would be undertaken by someone addicted to alcohol — oops, I was forgetting there that being “addicted to alcohol” is apparently not as bad as being an “alcoholic”, or at least that’s what millions of viewers might have gleaned from looking at Chilesy and his various mates agonising over these great issues. Still, the mate who seemed least in agony was probably Frank Skinner, who is a recovering alcoholic of long standing, having presumably gone past the stage of being merely addicted. Frank had no definite message to impart — he understood Chilesy’s love of the ‘social’ aspects of drink as only an alcoholic can — but it was the way he didn’t impart it that was most notable.

While Chilesy was still tormenting himself over which way to go, Skinner exuded a calmness which comes when such torments have ceased.

When he spoke of his regrets at having to give up the drink, he did it in such a laid-back way it suggested that at this stage of his life, he has better questions to be asking himself, than whether he’s an alcoholic or just, like, addicted to alcohol?

The answer is easy if you take it logically...

“...this magnificent line, that ‘we’re addicted to it, without being alcoholics’”