Am I an alcoholic, or do I just drink too much?

In short

• There is a proper test for this, and it takes five minutes. The AUDIT questionnaire was developed for the World Health Organization; in the original study, 92% of people with hazardous or harmful drinking scored 8 or more. The full ten questions and the scoring are below.
• The medical term today is alcohol use disorder. It is graded mild, moderate or severe by how many of eleven signs you recognise from the past year.
• If your score is high, the next step is a conversation, not a verdict. Renewed Life Center in Lakeside, Cape Town, offers a free, confidential call of twenty to forty minutes, and we reply the same day.

Scored higher than you hoped? Book a free, confidential call. No obligation, and a relative can make the call instead.

If you are asking this question, something has already made you wonder. A bad morning, a comment from your partner, a number on a bank statement. The honest answer to “am I an alcoholic?” is rarely a clean yes or no. More useful is to ask how much alcohol is costing you, and whether you still decide when to stop.

This page gives you two tools doctors actually use, with nothing hidden in a pop-up quiz. You can score them for yourself, or for someone you live with.

Is there a test to tell if you are an alcoholic?

Yes. The most widely used is the AUDIT, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, a ten-question screen developed across six countries for the World Health Organization. Each answer scores 0 to 4, to a maximum of 40. A score of 8 or more suggests drinking that is already harmful or putting you at risk.

The WHO manual for the AUDIT, by Babor and colleagues (2001), says the test “was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a simple method of screening for excessive drinking and to assist in brief assessment”. It has since been tested in South Africa as well, including in a 2025 study of 1,885 people in the Eastern Cape by Stockton and colleagues.

In the study that introduced it, by Saunders and colleagues in 1993, “92% had an AUDIT score of 8 or more” among people diagnosed with hazardous or harmful drinking, and 94% of those whose drinking was not hazardous scored under 8. It does not diagnose anything on its own, but it is a fast and honest first measure.

What are the ten AUDIT questions?

Answer for the past year and pick the option closest to the truth. The scores for each answer are in brackets. This is the version published by the UK government, which counts in units: one unit is half a pint of regular beer, a single measure of spirits, or half a small glass of wine.

If you count in South African standard drinks, convert first. The South African Medical Research Council counts a standard drink as 12 g of pure alcohol, and a UK unit is 8 g. One South African standard drink is therefore about one and a half UK units.

The three-question version. The first three questions on their own make up the AUDIT-C, a quick check for heavy drinking. Bush and colleagues showed in 1998 that the three questions detect heavy drinking at least as well as all ten. In the Eastern Cape study, an AUDIT-C of 4 or more for men, or 3 or more for women, was the point to take seriously.

What does your AUDIT score mean?

Add up the ten answers. Under 8 is low risk. From 8 to 15 your drinking carries increasing risk, 16 to 19 means higher risk, and 20 or more indicates possible dependence. The UK guidance that goes with the test suggests considering referral for specialist assessment from 20 upwards.

The WHO manual uses the same four bands and calls the top one, 20 to 40, the zone for “Referral to Specialist for Diagnostic Evaluation and Treatment”. For women, a lower score deserves attention. In the Eastern Cape study, a positive screen started at 8 for men and 7 for women, and the authors note that “lower cut-offs may optimize performance among women”. Of the 1,885 people tested, 9.5% had alcohol use disorder.

The number is a starting point. It cannot tell you why the drinking has grown, which is usually the more useful thing to find out. At Renewed Life Center, Dr Ruby Weber heads psychology and has more than two decades in the addictions field. Assessment looks at the drinking and at what sits under it, such as anxiety, low mood, trauma or burnout, because those are often what the alcohol has been treating.

Scored 16 or more? Talk it through with us, free and confidential. A clinical assessment can follow within three days, and we reply the same day.

What are the medical signs of alcohol use disorder?

The US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines it this way: “Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a medical condition characterized by an impaired ability to stop or control alcohol use despite adverse social, occupational, or health consequences.” That is NIAAA’s own wording. It is the term doctors now use where most people would say “alcoholic”.

Doctors diagnose alcohol use disorder when someone shows at least 2 of 11 signs within the same 12 months. Two or three signs mean a mild disorder, four or five moderate, and six or more severe, as the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism explains. In plain words, the eleven signs are:

The last two, tolerance and withdrawal, are the body’s side of it. If you recognise withdrawal, stopping suddenly on your own is not safe: delirium tremens, the severe form of alcohol withdrawal, may be fatal. If someone has a seizure or becomes confused after stopping, call an ambulance on 10177, or 112 from a mobile.

How common is problem drinking in South Africa?

Most South African adults do not drink at all, but those who do tend to drink a lot. According to the World Health Organization’s 2024 global status report on alcohol, only 32.5% of South Africans aged 15 and over drink. Even so, adults average 8.8 litres of pure alcohol a year. Among people who do drink, the average is 27.2 litres a year, close to five standard drinks every day. And 13.5% of all adults had 60 g of pure alcohol or more on one occasion in the past month.

That 13.5% is 21.1% among men and 6.8% among women, in figures for 2019. Worldwide, the same WHO report estimates that 400 million people aged 15 and over, 7% of adults, live with an alcohol use disorder. The report also finds that people with substance use disorders in contact with treatment range from “less than 1% to no more than 35%” by country.

So if your score is high, you are far from alone, and on the WHO’s figures most people in your position never reach treatment.

Why do so many people answer “not me”?

Because the picture in people’s heads is of someone who has lost everything, and many people who meet the criteria have not. They go to work, pay the bills and drink “only” in the evening. In a 2007 US national study of 1,484 people with alcohol dependence, Moss and colleagues found two groups, about 19% each, with later onset and “higher psychosocial functioning”. Put together, close to two in five did not match the stereotype. The word “alcoholic” becomes a way of measuring yourself against someone worse off, rather than against what alcohol is doing to you.

What helps more is to ask what the drink is doing for you. For most people it has a job: switching off after work, getting to sleep, quieting worry, making a social evening bearable. That is why willpower alone is such hard going: stop drinking and the need it was meeting is still there. Treatment works on both, the drinking and whatever it has been covering for.

If the word “alcoholic” is what keeps you from calling, leave it out. The first call is about what the drinking is doing to you, and nobody on it will ask you to take on a label. John Roberts, our Senior Recovery Specialist, has 39 years in personal recovery.

Not sure it is bad enough to call? That is exactly what the first call is for. Book it free, twenty to forty minutes, and we reply the same day.

What if you are scoring it for someone else?

Fill it in as honestly as you can from what you have seen, and bear in mind the real score may be higher: the parts that worry people most are often the parts they hide. If your answers land above 15, it is worth talking to someone before you talk to them, so the conversation has a plan and an offer of help behind it.

You can make the first call to us yourself: a partner or parent can call on someone else’s behalf. There is more on how to raise it in how to talk to a loved one about rehab, and if it is your partner drinking every evening, read when your husband drinks every night.

Why do people choose Renewed Life Center for alcohol treatment?

A high score usually means two things need work, the drinking and whatever it has been covering for, and here both are treated in one house by people you can name.

Detox on site, under medical cover. A resident GP, Dr John Wulz, examines every arrival, a risk assessment comes before withdrawal starts, and nurses are on duty 24 hours a day.

The reasons for the drinking get treated too: anxiety, depression, trauma and burnout go on the same plan as the alcohol, and a psychiatrist selects medication where it is needed. More on alcohol use disorder treatment.

Treatment runs in phases of one month, with individual psychotherapy about three times a week and group therapy five or more times a week in the first phase, followed by a sober living programme for those who want a slower return. Nobody leaves without a written relapse-prevention plan built for their own home.

You pay us directly, so the length of stay follows what the assessment finds rather than a scheme’s day limit. The house is in Lakeside, in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs, and airport transfers are included both ways for people flying in. See also alcohol treatment in Cape Town.

How do you start?

With a free call, confidential and twenty to forty minutes long, by WhatsApp, video or phone. Bring your score if you like. A clinical assessment of 45 to 90 minutes follows within three days, and admission can be immediate, typically within three days of first contact.

Book your free call or message us first, whichever feels easier today.

Questions people ask

This article is general information, not medical advice.

Sources

1. Saunders et al., Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), Addiction, 1993
2. UK Government, Alcohol use screening tests: AUDIT
3. NIAAA, Alcohol Use Disorder: A Comparison Between DSM-IV and DSM-5
4. MSD Manual Professional Edition, Alcohol Toxicity and Withdrawal
5. Babor et al., AUDIT: Guidelines for Use in Primary Care, World Health Organization, 2001
6. Bush et al., The AUDIT alcohol consumption questions (AUDIT-C), Archives of Internal Medicine, 1998
7. Stockton et al., Validation of screening instruments for alcohol and substance use disorders among men and women in Eastern Cape, South Africa, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2025
8. South African Medical Research Council, Creating a safer drinking environment
9. NIAAA, Understanding Alcohol Use Disorder
10. World Health Organization, Global status report on alcohol and health and treatment of substance use disorders, 2024
11. NHS, Alcohol units
12. Moss, Chen and Yi, Subtypes of alcohol dependence in a nationally representative sample, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2007