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by OrangeFlush 749 days ago
You have no idea what real alcohol dependance can look like. 74/Week is a run of the mill alcoholic. Many drink double that for years and even decades before their liver forces them to stop or die.
1 comments

Yea, that's what I thought, too. When OP posted that figure, I thought, that's like 10 beers a day... I mean, yes that's a lot, but even I might have achieved that during the peak of my irresponsible drinking era. When I think "actual alcoholic" I imagine about 3X that number.
The other issue here is the term tolerance. There's the "I have a high tolerance" sentiment from people who think that means they can drink a couple more drinks than their friends and not pass out verses real tolerance in the medical sense of the term. Tolerance in the medical sense is that you have submerged your central nervous system in a depressant for so long that it has effectively "Overclocked" itself to compensate. It now runs faster and hotter in order to overcome the constant presence of something trying to slow it down. That's why people with real tolerance sweat profusely, have uncontrollable shaking and potentially seizures and hallucinations when the CNS depressant is removed from their system. Their nervous system has adjusted to only function normally with the depressant in their system and functions extremely abnormally without it.