noun. A disease characterized by addiction to alcoholic beverages, often resulting in impaired social functioning and in damage to the liver, heart, and nervous system.

noun. In pathology, the effects of excessive use of alcoholic drinks.

noun. A diseased condition of the system, brought about by the continued use of alcoholic liquors.

noun. A chronic disease caused by addiction to alcohol, leading to a deterioration in health and social functioning.

noun. Acute alcohol poisoning.

noun. habitual intoxication; prolonged and excessive intake of alcoholic drinks leading to a breakdown in health and an addiction to alcohol such that abrupt deprivation leads to severe withdrawal symptoms

noun. an intense persistent desire to drink alcoholic beverages to excess

"My twenty-year career in alcoholism is a clichéd bore, but sober for most of sixteen years, I can live more intensely the ever-sordid hunger for booze that marks all classic noir."

-holism  alcoholic  dipsomania  dipsomaniac  

cacoethes  drug addiction  mania  passion  white plague  

apoplexy  asthma  autism  chorea  dyspepsia  

a habit  acquired tolerance  acute alcoholism  addictedness  addiction