Everyone probably knows someone who knows someone or heard of someone who is an alcoholic and down on his or her luck, but alcoholism effects many more people that we may know. It’s not the bums on the corner and those who have literally lost everything who have problems with alcohol, but also those who drink every single day without fail, those who have racked up DUI charges, those who don’t know when to stop drinking at a sitting and end up drunk every time, and these are everyday people. We all know them. Perhaps some of us have been them. Generally, I like to classify addiction as the condition which causes life to become unmanageable, but just because someone may drink everyday does not make his or her life unmanageable, right? Surely, this person could skip a day of drinking, but could they skip an entire week of consuming alcohol? What about a month? Even if this person never gets drunk from drinking everyday, it’s still a dependency forming habit and my guess would be that after a year of drinking on a daily basis, it would be virtually impossible for an individual to stop drinking for more than a few days. Does this make him a raging alcoholic? No, this makes him a functioning alcoholic and sometimes, functioning alcoholics are more dangerous than than those who are obvious with their alcoholism. No matter how it manifests itself, alcoholism is a deadly disease and kills from the inside out causing liver failure, organ shutdown and host of other serious health issues. For subtle alcoholism, the signs are hardly noticeable, and the alcoholic seems to have everything in order at home, at work, in his or her relationships, and generally gives no signs of trouble.

There is no science as to why some people are able to remain functioning alcoholics for long periods of time and others cannot hide their alcoholism, and seem to be screaming that there is a problem from the beginning. No matter what kind of alcoholic an individual may be, alcoholism is alcoholism and it’s danger is the same from one individual to the next. Regardless of how functional an alcoholic may be, there are always signs. This is why it is so important to know the warning signs, because to someone akin to these signs, even the most functional alcoholic cannot hide his problems.