Yeah, I don't think you're an alcoholic. It might be because I come from a wet culture. Which is to say one where having a beer over lunch isn't (or wasn't) fr

Yeah, I don't think you're an alcoholic. It might be because I come from a wet culture. Which is to say one where having a beer over lunch isn't (or wasn't) frowned upon. But 4 beers a day is completely manageable. Doctors have been trying to tally up how many beers it takes until someone is an "alcoholic", but IMHO they're far off the mark. Because as it is, it's quite easy to tally up enough standard drinks to become a medically defined "alcoholic", or to enter some similar classification ("heavy drinker"?), without ever experiencing any clear behavioral or physiological issues (e.g. not diverting money from needs to drink, not being a nuisance to yourself or others, absence of seizures upon cessation of intake). Even the idea of a "standard drink" is rather lousy: 4 shots of vodka doesn't equal 4 beers. The amount of alcohol per volume matters, and the higher the relative volume of alcohol, the faster it hits you and the more easily one might develop dependence. In short, you're more or less fine. Unless you're downing a fifth of vodka every day, in which case you might want to cut down a bit.