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.

Here is AA's take on it. From the AA.org website:

We decided to try and face up to what alcohol had done to us. Here are some of the questions we tried to answer honestly. If we answered YES to four or more questions, we were in deep trouble with our drinking. See how you do. Remember, there is no disgrace in facing up to the fact that you have a problem.

Answer YES or NO to the following questions.

1 - Have you ever decided to stop drinking for a week or so, but only lasted for a couple of days?

2 - Do you wish people would mind their own business about your drinking-- stop telling you what to do?

3 - Have you ever switched from one kind of drink to another in the hope that this would keep you from getting drunk?

4 - Have you had to have an eye-opener upon awakening during the past year?

5 - Do you envy people who can drink without getting into trouble?

6 - Have you had problems connected with drinking during the past year?

7 - Has your drinking caused trouble at home?

8 - Do you ever try to get "extra" drinks at a party because you do not get enough?

9 - Do you tell yourself you can stop drinking any time you want to, even though you keep getting drunk when you don't mean to?

10 - Have you missed days of work or school because of drinking?

11 - Do you have "blackouts"?

12 - Have you ever felt that your life would be better if you did not drink?

I don't necessarily think of Dean as an alcoholic (all are different in how their disease manifests), but his only other options are pills, psychotherapy (which would probably only get him checked into the Hotel California) or never sleeping again.

Given what he's been through, I'd say a couple of shots of bourbon at night might be all he needs to make the lambs stop screaming. As others have said, it's more a coping mechanism but I'm not sure I'd say he's a drunk.

While Dean is still drinking a lot by normal standards, in his conversation with Lisa about their time together he says something along the lines of "I was drinking too much", which to me means he is now drinking less than he was. I'm not saying Dean is a reliable narrator about this, but I do think it is less of a problem after a year than it was in the beginning. To some degree, Sam and Bobby's plan was working, and Dean was recovering, even though he was a LONG way from what would be normal for most people.

eta (I got very delayed in posting this, so I didn't see Marcia's post.

I guess I think the normal standards don't really apply to the Hunters.