One immediate question is when and what constitutes a drinking problem? When is it too much. There are some medical classifications stating that one glass of wine per day constitutes alcoholism. Is that true, or does it make any sense?
However, she does drink a few glasses of wine a day and having tried everything else, she is adamant that alcohol is the only acceptable painkiller for her to take for the rest of her life.
I mention this because I have roughly 1-3 drinks per night -what the doctor told my mother as "average for a Frenchman" - yet when I drink even a beer I lose all motivation to go to the gym that night or to cook a healthy and properly proportioned meal. So I think the way to define a drinking problem isn't in quantity, but by the opportunity cost of drinking or drinking too much on any given occasion.
There is low risk drinking, increased risk drinking, and high risk drinking. Alongside that you have dependant and non-dependant drinking (an addiction to alcohol).
To get a medically supervised withdrawal from alcohol in England a person meeds to be drinking 40 units per day. That's a litre of vodka at 40% ABV every day.
Low risk drinking is one or two drinks a day, with some days drink free.
>Another way of describing addiction is the presence of the 4 C's:
>Craving
>Loss of Control of amount or frequency of use
>Compulsion to use
>Use despite Consequences.
[1]: https://www.porticonetwork.ca/web/fundamentals-addiction-too...