Alcoholism is chronic. Chronic conditions are lingering and susceptible to being activated whenever certain conditions obtain. In the case of alcoholism as with diabetes, another chronic disease, we do not speak of being cured. The disease may be arrested through abstinence from alcohol and the alcohol-like drugs. Resuming the use of alcohol or other such drugs, even in the most moderate amounts, threatens the reactivation of the active disease.
Alcoholism is progressive.
The longer the disease is active the more extreme the symptoms become. Dr. E. M. Jellinek of the World Health Organization described the pattern of progression half a century ago. The symptomatology has not changed. Although no one of the above symptoms is diagnostically valid by itself, a cluster of the above may indicate active addiction has already begun. Another, lesser known, aspect of this progression is that the physical intolerance continues to grow, even in abstinence.