Are you drinking too much?

September 11, 2001 6:13 PM

Are you drinking too much? Daniel Lieberman is a psychiatrist at George Washington University who has posted a clinically-tested questionnaire which measures personal relationships with the demon drink. Unlike the usual amateur "are you an alcoholic?" tests on the Net it seems methodologically sound and non-judgemental. I don't know about scientific - but it may actually be useful in a Socratic, "know yourself" sort of way. It does take about 10 minutes to fill out - enough for half a gin and tonic - but it's free, well set out, and will probably leave you feeling slightly less guilty about your drinking habits than before. So...chin-chin!
posted by MiguelCardoso (9 comments total)

Annoyingly enough, they want your email address to send the results to.

Getting SQL server errors on every page of this site. It's so bad it looks like someone is mucking with the ASP trying to do development on the live server. This is a five-part questionnaire and there's no way I can make it to the end of this.
posted by geegaw at 6:42 PM on September 11, 2001

it won't take any email address I offer, it says they've all been registered.

is it an email harvesting device?
posted by rebeccablood at 6:55 PM on September 11, 2001

I've tried it on four separate occasions and had two friends go through it as well - with no problems. The results are produced at the end of the questionnaire, not e-mailed. The last time I tried was 5:25 PM PST. The test was recommended by a neurologist friend of mine, Alexandre Castro Caldas, who has used it with his patients. Also, it was recently praised as "excellent" on the Jewish World Review website.
Is this the famous First-Link -Curse in action?
I urge MeFi members to persist as the results are very detailed and enlightening. Mainly, I apologise to Geegaw and Rebeccablood for their frustration. Please feel free to try my own email - [e-mail] - in case you run into further difficulties.

Cheers.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:58 PM on September 11, 2001

I also got the message that my email address was already registered. I set up an account with a second, and that was accepted. Then I answered the first set of questions, hit submit, and after a couple of minutes, the browser window just closed. I wasn't able to get in again after that.
posted by phichens at 8:30 PM on September 11, 2001

I also got the message that my email address was already registered. I set up an account with a second, and that was accepted. Then I answered the first set of questions, hit submit, and after a couple of minutes, the browser window just closed. I wasn't able to get in again after that.

OK, I just tried again. Second email address wasn't found in the system, but I was able to register with the first address. The rest of it seems to be working now.
posted by phichens at 8:35 PM on September 11, 2001

Sorry for the semi-duplicate post.

That test was rather useless for me. Probably 'cause I answered almost every question with an emphatic 'no.' I guess less than one drink a month doesn't equal a problem. (Unless you see that as not drinking enough.)
posted by phichens at 8:49 PM on September 11, 2001

Here's what happened for me- I went through the whole thing, then I got some error, then I thought I was done, but it made me start over. And THEN, I started over, (fine, fair enough) and after I got through part one, I got this weird page that said something like "thanks for completing the questionnaire, DUDE!!" and then mentioned my email address a couple times to make the point that they had it. I feel like this thing has been hacked. Your thoughts?
posted by babydoll at 9:35 PM on September 11, 2001

I felt the test was somewhat biased against those of who do drink and make no bones about it. It didn't care how long the drinks were spread out and it certainly didn't seem to care that although I may be an above average consumer, I also have an above average body weight allowing for much greater tolerance. It also didn't weigh consumption against the section of the test where I honestly answered every question saying that I do not feel I have ANY problems related to alcohol and neither do my friends and family. In fact, everyone that spends time around me considers ME to be very in control when I'm drinking - including those who DON'T drink.

That said, I think it's about as effective as any such questionairre can be. It would be impossible to account for all mitigating factors in a static list of questions without making it impossibly long and such lists are far from replacing good old human analysis!
posted by RevGreg at 12:15 AM on September 12, 2001

Seems to work OK now.

I was surprised at how little the average American drinks - I have a glass of wine most evenings and that puts me higher than 70% of American males! As the poster above mentioned, I thought it would distinguish between regular drinking and binging, but if so there was no evidence in my reports.

RevGreg - maybe it's just me, but you seem surprisingly certain what others think about you! I wouldn't have thought most people would have any opinion at all on how in control you are (or I am).
posted by andrew cooke at 2:38 AM on September 12, 2001