ALCOHOLISM 

Is the addiction to or dependency upon drinking excessive amounts of alcoholic beverages. Since the late twentieth century, it has been considered an addictive disorder. It is characterized by compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcohol, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing. Like other drug addictions, alcoholism is medically defined as a treatable disease. The term alcoholism is widely used, and was first coined in 1849 by Magnus Huss, but in medicine the term was replaced by "alcohol abuse" and "alcohol dependence" in the 1980s. (The term alcohol dependence is sometimes used as a synonym for alcoholism, sometimes in a narrower sense.) Similarly in 1979 an expert World Health Organisation committee disfavoured the use of "alcoholism" as a diagnostic entity, preferring the category of "alcohol dependence syndrome". In the 19th and early 20th centuries, alcohol dependence was called dipsomania before the term "alcoholism" replaced it.