Load file: Alcoholism

Alcohol dependence is a chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by a loss of control over alcohol consumption and the continuation of drinking despite severe social, physical, and psychological consequences. Key features include the development of tolerance (requiring increasingly more for the same effect), withdrawal symptoms upon abstinence (up to life-threatening delirium tremens), loss of control, and the narrowing of daily life to the acquisition and consumption of alcohol. Alcohol is the only socially normalized addiction—and therein lies its literary potential: the high-functioning alcoholic who appears competent on the outside while falling apart on the inside. The detective staring at crime scene photos through the bottom of a glass. The mother who loves her children and fails every day. Alcoholism as a character trait creates a specific unreliability of memory—blackouts as narrative gaps that the reader must fill together with the character. And the moral ambiguity: guilt and illness as an inextricable knot.