They tend to have no more than one or two drinks in a day. Many alcoholics started out as social drinkers. If you are a social drinker, you stand ab0t a 1 in 10 chance of developing serious alcohol-related problems at some time in your life. Maybe that problem will be the disease of alcoholism. Maybe it will be related to a moment of unprotected passion followed by a lifelong health problem.
People sometimes forget that alcohol is an active drug that affects the brain.
Because it affects the brain, it affects behavior, coordination, inhibitions, thought processes and memory. Because people are different, the effects of alcohol can be different. Not only do the effects vary between people but sometimes in the same person from one drinking episode to the next. For reasons that we don't fully understand, some people who drink will contract a progressive, fatal disease called alcoholism. Nobody deliberately sets out to get this illness.