Addiction Spectrum

Written by Niall Davison

The 1–10 Alcohol Addiction Spectrum: Where Do You Fall?

My hot take on alcohol is this: we’re all addicted. Well… that’s not exactly true. Some people are genuine moderators — but, by and large, moderators are unicorns. My wife is one. So what makes Lee-Ann different from me and the rest of us?

Moderators don’t know they’re moderators. The word moderation doesn’t even flicker across their brain. Lee-Ann can go for weeks without a drink, then out of the blue say, “I might have a glass of wine tonight.” She’ll pour her Barefoot Pink Moscato and nurse it for over an hour before saying, “I’m not really enjoying that,” and emptying half of it down the sink.

If she’s heading away with the girls for the weekend, she has zero interest in a 5 a.m. airport drink. But, not wanting to be a buzzkill, she might order one just to fit in. What really sets her — and other natural moderators — apart from the rest of us is this: she could quite happily not have another drink all day. Granted, she probably will, but it’ll likely be three or four more drinks in the afternoon or early evening, then come 7 p.m. she’ll say, “I’ve had enough, I’m just on water now.”

Lee-Ann has never crossed the threshold into problem drinking — and she almost certainly never will. That’s not to say it’s impossible; anyone can become a pickle with enough “practice.”

Before I quit, I was a problem drinker. Some people call us “grey-area drinkers,” others “middle-lane drinkers.” I think those terms let us off the hook a bit. If you’ve evolved from a 4 to anything above a 5 on the spectrum (and most of us have), there’s really no way back. Drink might not be causing too many problems yet, but they’re coming — with every year that passes.

My drinking career went like this:
13–20: FUN
21–34: FUN + PROBLEMS
35–42: PROBLEMS + FUN

I decided I wasn’t hanging around for the just PROBLEMS phase.

Unlike Lee-Ann, I couldn’t wait for that first pint at the airport — because that’s what problem drinkers want: an excuse to drink when the normal rules don’t apply. But once that first pint sails down, we’re off to the races. What follows is an endless game of mind-tennis, where all that matters is getting our fix for the rest of the day. I could have three pints at the airport and, with the boarding gate closing in fifteen minutes, still say, “We’ve time for one more.”

Every time the drinks trolley rattles down the aisle, we’ll order three drinks each — not because we want to be steaming drunk by 10 a.m., but because after every drink we slip into that uncomfortable state of withdrawal. We need our fix — our drug. The thought of being without it is unbearable.

And when we land? The cycle continues. By mid-afternoon we’re three sheets to the wind, but we can’t stop. We tell ourselves we’re sick of beer and move onto something stronger — wine, cocktails, rum and coke. In truth, our dopamine spikes are getting smaller with every drink, while the withdrawal lows are getting deeper. We need a stronger hit just to feel level again.

By midnight, some of us have hit the wall and gone to bed, while the rest try to keep the party going — even though we can barely stand or speak. We’ll likely black out and not remember how we made it back to the hotel.

The thing is, none of us set out to get this drunk. No one wants to be so legless they can’t stand or speak — but that’s exactly what happens. We start drinking at 5 a.m. and can’t stop. By midnight — twenty-plus drinks later — we’re wrecked. Why? Because we’re pickles who can’t moderate.

At the back of our minds, we tell ourselves that when we’re older, we’ll go back to being like Lee-Ann. But that’s virtually impossible. As the saying goes: once a cucumber becomes a pickle, it can never be a cucumber again.

Sure, we can go the other way — devolving to the decayed, withered pickle in the 9–10 range — but if you think you can return to being a natural moderator, you’re deluded. Those days are gone. Once we cross the threshold from 4 to 5, most of us live out the rest of our lives as a pickle (a problem drinker) between 5 and 8. A few will slide into the alcoholic phase — but virtually no one will ever become a cucumber again.

Put simply:

Cucumbers / Moderators (1–4): Don’t think about drinking — it takes up no brain space.

Pickles / Problem Drinkers (5–8): Drink when the normal rules don’t apply — early flights, champagne breakfasts, Christmas morning. They want to drink whenever they think they can get away with it.

Decayed Pickles / Alcoholics (9–10): Want to drink all day, every day.

I considered myself a 7 on the spectrum — a Thursday-to-Sunday drinker with no off switch on a night out.

How I Drank in the House

Mon–Wed: Didn’t drink
Thursday night: 2 × large glasses of white wine
Friday night: 2 × large glasses of white wine
Saturday night: Maybe 2 beers, ¾ bottle of red wine, and 1 gin & tonic or rum & coke
Sunday night: 2 beers, ¾ bottle of red wine

How I Drank on a Night Out

Something like:
10 beers, 6 gin & tonics or rum & cokes, 2 glasses of wine, 2–3 shots

On Holiday with My Wife (Typical Day)

8 beers, 4 rum & cokes, 2 cocktails, 4 glasses of wine

On Holiday with My Mates (Typical Day)

At least 12 beers, 10 rum & cokes or gin & tonics, 4 x cocktails, 4 glasses of wine, 2 shots

Telltale Signs of My Addiction

• On Sunday nights, if my wife got up to go to the toilet while we were watching TV, I’d nip into the kitchen to top up my red wine — just enough so she wouldn’t notice. Sometimes I’d just swig straight from the bottle.
• I’d stare at the bottom of my last glass of red wine on Sunday night, wondering: Is that one sip left or two? I’d swirl the scarlet liquid around and think, There goes my happiness for another four days, before necking the final gulp.
• I once snuck gin & tonic in a plastic water bottle into my niece’s pantomime. In a church hall.
• On an all-inclusive holiday with my wife, because the bar glasses were small, I’d get two beers at a time — down one immediately and carry the other back to the sun loungers like nothing happened.
• I loved any excuse to drink when the normal rules didn’t apply — the 5 a.m. airport pint; the 10 a.m. Christmas Day fizz; the hair of the dog at 11 a.m. every day on holiday.
• I loved drinking in the house on my own

These are the reasons I believe I was a 7. Forcing myself to take three days off a week was my way of pretending I was in control — that I’d never slide any further down the scale. But maybe I already had. I think if you’re a daily drinker — in any quantity — you have to be at least an 8. If you can’t get through a single day without alcohol, how could you not be?

For years I told myself I was a “normal” drinker, but I had no idea how much even a Thurs–Sun habit was wrecking my week. I was constantly living life at 40% of instead of my baseline 80% now.

If you still don’t think you’re addicted, here’s the money question:

All you have to do is never drink again. Name your number.

Imagine I’ve got a blank chequebook, and I’ll write down whatever number you want — if you agree to never drink again. What’s your price? A hundred grand? A quarter of a million? Half a million? A million?

So go on — be brutally honest. Where are you really on the spectrum: the cucumber, the pickle, or a pickle gone bad?

If anyone wants to read anymore of my whacky weekly blogs, you can find them on my completely free Substack newsletter, Half-Time Team Talk: Calling time on booze, bets and bad habits. For those curious about the path less chosen in the second half on life.