Are we misusing "functional alcoholic"?

Which we?

I think I agree with Amy and I think it's an addiction that's not impairing his day-to-day routine, but he needs to drink to maintain it.

Me. Others. Again, my understanding is that a high level of alcohol needs to be consumed, but it doesn't affect oneself the way it does other people. and that a person is physically and mentally worse off without the alcohol. Which, in my mind, doesn't equate to one glass a night.

I think if you took the alcohol away, Dean could manage. He might not want to, but he's got enough of the soldier in him to do what needs to be done.

I just don't see it as a problem, I guess? But I also think I might know a lot of people who drink maybe too much, on a regular basis.

Which, in my mind, doesn't equate to one glass a night.

We have been shown him drinking at least one drink a night, after having been told he drank fifty drinks a week. I don't think it's out of line to assume that he may be drinking more, unless told differently.

I think if you took the alcohol away, Dean could manage

Do you think he could have managed prior to losing Sam?

Hard to say, ita. Probably not, in the lead-up to the Michael/Lucifer showdown.

I think with the life he's made, and the responsibilities he's chosen, if he was told he had to stop drinking, he could probably do it now. He just wouldn't want to.

I don't think it's out of line to assume that he may be drinking more, unless told differently.

It's equally not out of line to assume he's been drinking no more than we've seen nightly, until told otherwise.

but my point was about the potential misuse of "functional alcholic", and not that Dean is still possibly drinking too much.

It's equally not out of line to assume he's been drinking no more than we've seen nightly, until told otherwise.

But at least one of those nights we've seen him have more than one drink. Also, when he was drinking 50 drinks per night, that also wasn't onscreen.

For me, I'm just assuming similar momentum until they tell me they've redirected it. That's their job. He's still unhappy, he's still at least partially numb, and between the finale and the premiere we've seem fistfullling a tumbler of the hard stuff. At least one shot per, maybe more.

eta: But I don't get how what I'm saying is out of line with functional alcoholism.

Well, how do you define functional alcoholism. Maybe your defintion differs from mine.

And with the "more than one drink a night", we were told about it, by Dean.

So fun to try and interpret what is meant by what is specifically shown and told and how to extrapolate from that.

I seem completely incapable of spelling alcoholism. Just now put an extra h in it.

When I'm suggesting that Dean's a functional alcoholic I mean that he's self-medicating with alcohol. He's not drinking to get messed up whoop whoop storm the Bastille, but he's applying alcohol where therapy or prescription medication is better suited. Which reads to me in line with what I thought you stated.

We've seen Dean drink more than one drink per night so far. We've seen him drink onscreen similar amounts to how much we saw when he was drinking 50 drinks a weekly. My Occam's razor means I need to be told that self-medication, as stated, has stopped.

You know what's horrible? I was listening to Florence & the Machine's "Dog Days" and thinking of Sam, and wanting to give him a hug, and realizing that hugs won't fix a damned thing.