Whenever Suzanne expressed concern about her drinking, her friends and family members assured her that she was fine. Even her physician shrugged off the matter, telling her merely "to keep an eye on it."
Then Suzanne came across drinkerscheckup.com online. For $25, it offered to analyze her drinking and provide detailed feedback. Ninety minutes after Suzanne signed up, this software program changed her life. "I haven't had a drink in more than two years, thanks to Drinker's Check-up," says Suzanne, a housewife and mother in suburban New York.
The conventional measure of a drinking problem is devastation: lost jobs, broken marriages, ruined health and legal woes. The conventional term for a drinker seeking help is "alcoholic."
But Drinker's Check-up is one of a growing number of Web sites devoted to the idea that you don't have to be a wreck or an alcoholic to contemplate cutting back or quitting altogether. Research increasingly shows that early intervention can keep a heavy drinker from skidding into full-blown addiction.
People are also reading…
"We're finding that, as with other medical conditions, it's important to catch it early," says Mark Willenbring, director of the division of treatment and recovery research for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which has funded several studies of Internet programs, including Drinker's Check-up.
To be sure, hard-core drinkers are often physically addicted, and for them quitting can require medical oversight during detoxification. But these drinkers — who dominate the popular perception of the problem — are the exception rather than the rule. Even for drinkers requiring more extensive treatment, these Web sites could serve as a starting point.
The 90-minute survey at Drinker's Check-up forced Suzanne — whose drinking had not caused difficulties such as health or legal problems — to nevertheless consider how much she drank and the patterns of thought and emotion surrounding it. Calculating her consumption, she determined she was drinking nine to 16 shots of vodka an evening, four to seven evenings a week. Although primarily a social drinker, she sometimes snuck snorts in the basement, where she kept a bottle.
Drinker's Check-up informed her that she drank more than 90 percent of women in America. Suzanne, who requested that her last name not be published out of concern for privacy, says she doesn't believe this news meant she was an alcoholic. But she believes it enabled her to quit before she became one.
A number of recent studies have shown that many heavy drinkers reduce or eliminate their alcohol consumption after using software programs that tell a drinker how much his consumption compares with that of others, as well as how much risk he faces because of family history and habits such as driving while intoxicated. A study funded by one of the National Institutes of Health, published last March in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, showed that after undergoing Drinker's Check-up, 61 heavy imbibers reduced their consumption by 50 percent over the following 12 months, with six of them quitting entirely. Similarly, their alcohol-related problems fell 50 percent.
These Internet programs provide how-to-stay-sober tips of the sort that can be found in most alcoholic-treatment literature. But perhaps most crucial is the news that a particular individual's alcohol worries may be well-founded — something a drinker with a minor problem may not hear from family or friends.
Loved ones can be reluctant to raise concerns that would sug-gest something as serious as alcoholism. But also their comfort level about their own drinking may be threatened by someone else's decision to quit or cut back.
Peer pressure being greatest among the young, some drinking Web sites — such as e-CHUG.com, mystudentbody.com and alcoholedu.com — are aimed specifically at college students. Studies have shown these sites to be effective at reducing binge drinking among college students. Because heavy drinkers tend to stick together, a student may not realize until he visits e-CHUG that getting drunk four times a week makes him not a typical student but, rather, an at-risk outlier.
A growing number of colleges offer these sites free of charge, and some colleges, such as the University of Texas, are moving to require incoming freshmen to enroll in these online drinking surveys.
Alcohol consumption is the third-leading preventable cause of death in America — smoking being the first — according to a 2004 Journal of the American Medical Association article titled "Actual Causes of Death in the United States," which found 85,000 alcohol-caused deaths in the year 2000.
Some alcohol researchers emphasize that the desire to curb or stop drinking can be a health issue as much as anything, akin to quitting smoking. In keeping with this view, the sites refrain from diagnosing anyone as alcoholic.
For many drinkers wanting information or tips on how to cut back or quit, the Internet can offer privacy.
Watching members of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting near her home file onto the street one day, "I decided I wouldn't want to be seen like that," says Suzanne, the suburban homemaker.
● Here are some Web sites aimed at identifying problem drinking:
• Drinkerscheckup.com — For $25, offers an analysis of a drinker's levels of consumption and risk. Offers tips on how to cut back or quit.
• e-CHUG.com — Contracts with colleges to offer students a drinking survey and advice on cutting back.
• Mystudentbody.com and Alcoholedu.com — Similar to e-CHUG.
• SmartRecovery.org — An addiction-recovery program that offers online meetings, free of charge.
• NA.org — Offers information and meeting locations for Narcotics Anonymous; some online meetings, free.
• Alcoholics-Anonymous.org — Offers literature, locations of AA meetings and guidance on what constitutes problem drinking.