How to Tell if Someone Is an Alcoholic

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Doctor Kim Makoi, I'm a holistic chiropractor and a certified addictionologist in San Francisco. And this is how tell if someone is an alcoholic. It's not always easy to tell if someone is an alcoholic because a lot of alcoholics are very high functioning. They're able to hold their jobs and seem normal to other people but an alcoholic is somebody who is not metabolizing the alcohol in the same way that someone who is a non-alcoholic is, so it's not always just a matter of somebody's drinking too much or someone seems to always drink too much. It's a physiological issue. So some of the signs that someone might be an alcoholic are things such as someone who needs a drink first thing in the morning, somebody who drinks frequently throughout the day, or somebody whose mood noticeably changes while they're drinking or if they're unable to have a drink, somebody who seems to smell like alcohol a lot of the time, somebody who lies about how much alcohol they've had and another good one is someone who has had multiple DUIs. Usually after a single DUI, a non-alcoholic is pretty scared and they don't ever get another one, somebody who has had more than one, it's usually not the only times they've ever been out on the road after drinking. So those are some of the things to look out for and some of the ways to tell if someone might be an alcoholic."