26 Assessing Alcohol Use Disorder

Essential Concepts

Recommended time: 2 minutes for screening; 5 to 10 minutes for probing, if screen is positive.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

In an initial diagnostic interview, you will probably not have time to do a complete assessment of the history, extent, and consequences of a patient’s substance abuse problem. Such an assessment requires a full session in itself. What, then, are your more limited goals? There are three:

1. Determine whether your patient meets DSM-5 criteria for alcohol/drug use disorder.

2. Get a sense of the severity of the problem.

3. Determine how the alcohol use interacts with any comorbid psychiatric disorders present.

The most important tip for beginners is to be nonjudgmental. This requires some soul-searching because most of us have negative prejudices about substance abusers, and we tend to see them as being morally suspect. Be aware of the extent to which you hold such attitudes, and evaluate whether they are accurate. Try to meet with recovered alcoholics. Their stories are often poignant and will help you to develop a more sympathetic and compassionate attitude. Learn about the disease model of alcoholism (Vaillant 1995). The more you can view alcoholism as similar to the other psychiatric disorders you treat, the fewer prejudices you will retain.

Assessment Techniques

Screening Questions

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The best quick screen for alcoholism remains the tried-and-true CAGE questionnaire (see below; Ewing 1984), in which a positive response to two or more of the items implies a 95% chance of alcohol abuse or dependence. However, one study (Steinweg and Worth 1993) suggests that the way interviewers transition to the CAGE questions profoundly affects the questionnaire’s sensitivity. Researchers divided 43 confirmed alcoholics into two groups. In group I, the CAGE was introduced with an open-ended question, such as “Do you have a drink now and then?” In group II, patients were first asked to quantitate their alcohol intake with the question, “How much do you drink?” Sensitivity toward the CAGE questions was dramatically higher in group I (95%) than in group II (32%), demonstrating the importance of beginning the screening in a nonjudgmental way.

CAGE questionnaire:

Cut down: “Have you felt you should cut down on your drinking?”

Annoyed: “Have people annoyed you by getting on your case about your drinking?”

Guilty: “Have you ever felt bad or guilty about your drinking?”

Eye-opener: “Have you ever needed to take a drink first thing in the morning to steady your nerves or get rid of a hangover?”

Begin your screen with the nonthreatening question:

Do you enjoy a drink now and then?

If a patient answers, “I never drink,” you should ask, “Why not?” Most people of the American culture have a drink occasionally; people who make a point of not drinking are uncommon. They may avoid drinking because they are recovered alcoholics, because they have a family member with a serious drinking problem, or for religious or ethical reasons. Most people will answer with something like, “Oh, I have glass of wine with dinner” or “I have a beer when I barbecue.”

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Kevin Rice, LCSW, says that “When asking about substance abuse, I find that the word ‘experiment’ almost always elicits a more accurate response than the word ‘use.’ An inquiry into the possible use or abuse of marijuana would begin, ‘Have you ever experimented with marijuana?’” (Shea 2007).

Once you have ascertained any use of alcohol of other substances, jump right into the CAGE questions:

Cut down: Have you ever tried to cut down on your drinking?

A cardinal feature of alcoholism is the loss of control over drinking, and this question gets at that issue. If the patient answers “yes,” follow up with

What made you decide to cut down?

The answer to this question will likely move you into an exploration of the adverse consequences of drinking that the patient experienced. (See next section.)

Annoyed: Have you ever been annoyed about friends’ or family’s criticism of your drinking?

The severe alcoholic will not only have been criticized by loved ones for his drinking but may have completely alienated most important people in his life.

Guilty: Have you ever felt a little guilty about your drinking?

Again, a positive response is an invitation to further exploration.

Eye-opener: Have you ever felt hungover or shaky in the morning and taken a drink to get rid of that feeling?

This behavior is a good indicator of out-of-control drinking.

As your final screening question, ask matter-of-factly:

Do you think that you have a drinking problem?

I have been amazed at how many patients answer “no” to all the CAGE questions and then answer “yes” to this one.

If the patient has answered “no” to the CAGE questions and the drinking problem question, and if there were no clues to a drinking problem (e.g., the odor of alcohol on the breath), the patient has no drinking problem, and you can ask the general question:

Do you use any recreational drugs, like marijuana, LSD, or cocaine?

If the patient gives a negative answer to this question, you can move out of the substance abuse area.

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If a patient has admitted to a drinking problem, I have found it useful to ask about other types of substance abuse by using the interviewing technique of symptom expectation:

Aside from drinking, what sorts of recreational drugs do you use regularly? Cocaine? Marijuana? Speed? Heroin?

The phrasing here not only communicates the assumption that your patient has used these drugs but that he uses them on a regular basis; this is an example of symptom exaggeration. The result is that the patient who abuses these drugs occasionally will feel less ashamed to admit such use (e.g., “I don’t use them all the time—I’ve gone on a few coke binges, and I’ve shot dope a few times, but I keep it under control”).

Probing Questions

DSM-5 Criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder

The following list refers to the mnemonic: Tempted With Cognac. For the diagnosis of alcohol use disorder, the patient must meet at least two of the following eleven criteria:

Once your screening questions have established that your patient has a substance use problem, your next step is to use probing questions to definitively establish the DSM-5 substance use disorder diagnosis and to assess severity. One way to approach establishing the diagnosis would be to go down the list of criteria, beginning with tolerance, and to simply ask about each one. While this may be time efficient, it tends to produce unreliable information, particularly in the patient who is ashamed of her addiction or is trying to hide the extent of it for other reasons.

The better approach is to ask open-ended questions about your patient’s drinking history and transition to specific questions about DSM-5 criteria as you go along.

Do you remember your first drink?

Alcoholics often remember their first drink vividly and get a twinkle in their eye. For some, this was the first time they ever felt at peace with themselves.

When did you start drinking frequently?

Carlat4e-Target-icon  KEY POINT

The earlier alcoholism began the more severe and refractory the problem is likely to have become. Research shows that 25% of male drinkers have an early-onset form of alcoholism called type II alcoholism. This is usually inherited from the father and is a particularly severe form of the disorder, with a high prevalence of violence and comorbid depression and suicidality (Cloninger et al. 1996).

When were you drinking most heavily?

This question allows you to ascertain the sorts of life situations that have been most associated with heavy drinking, and it also serves as a good jumping-off point for a series of questions relating to tolerance, withdrawal, and adverse consequences.

Have you found that you’ve needed more drinks to get the same high?

Frequent drinkers develop tolerance to the effects of alcohol. A general rule of thumb is that a nonalcoholic person will feel drunk after consuming three to four average drinks on an empty stomach over the course of an hour (Clark 1981). An alcoholic may require two or three times that amount.

When you’ve cut down or stopped drinking for a few days, have you developed problems such as insomnia, the shakes, or convulsions?

You should become familiar with the usual time course and the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. Patients generally repeat patterns of withdrawal that they have experienced in the past. This is important for you to know so that you can decide whether to recommend inpatient detoxification to a patient who just stopped drinking.

Have you found over the years that you’ve had trouble controlling your intake of alcohol?

This is essentially a rephrasing of the “cut-down” question of the CAGE, and it gets at the crucial issue of lack of control of alcohol intake, as expressed in criteria 3 and 4 of the DSM-5.

The next few questions are directed toward finding out whether alcohol use has had a negative effect on the patient’s life in some objective way. I stress objective because many alcoholics will deny that they have a subjective problem; via skillful interviewing, you can demonstrate that alcohol has caused problems. In this way, your assessment can, in itself, contribute toward the earliest stage of alcoholism treatment, in which the alcoholic accepts that he has a problem.

In an insightful and cooperative patient, you can get reliable information about adverse effects by asking straightforward questions:

How has your alcoholism affected your relationships? Your work? Other aspects of your life? Have you gotten into fights or been arrested because of your drinking?

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When interviewing a patient in denial, however, you will have to obtain this information indirectly, via the social history and medical history. A severe alcoholic’s social history will be replete with failed relationships, job changes, and legal difficulties, and his medical history will be significant for emergency room visits or hospitalizations for alcohol-related injuries. As you glean such information, gingerly introduce the issue of alcohol use:

You must have felt pretty down when your wife left you.Was drinking any solace for you then?

Note that this is a normalizing question, with the implicit message: “Anyone in a similar situation might have reached for the bottle; that’s not something to be ashamed of.” If your patient admits to drinking, follow up with:

Was your drinking an issue with your wife? Did she leave you because of it?

You can use the same technique with other aspects of the social history. When you hear some clue of alcoholism-related adverse consequences, ask if alcohol was involved.

Finally, once you’ve finished getting the remote alcoholism history, you should ask about recent use. This will help you to determine the need for detoxification hospitalization and the extent to which recent alcohol use may be affecting the patient’s mental status. For these questions, you should try to ascertain quantity of both the amount consumed and the frequency.

I need to know about how much you’ve been drinking over the past 2 weeks so that I can come up with some good treatment ideas for you. How many fifths have you been able to put away per day—one? two? more?

This question combines a number of defusing strategies. First, you introduce the question by saying why you’re asking it, not to condemn the patient, but to help him. Second, you appeal to his narcissism by saying “How many fifths have you been able to put away?” Finally, you use symptom exaggeration by suggesting a degree of use higher than you expect: one, two, or more fifths per day.

“Blame it on the Alcohol” Technique

Another good way of helping your patient ponder ways in which alcohol might have become a real problem (described by White and Epston 1990) is to give it an exterior identity, almost as if it were a separate person. This way, you and your patient can join forces against an outside “enemy.” For example, you can ask such questions as “If it were possible, would you like to limit the way that alcohol pushes you around? … How has alcohol been tricking you into withdrawing and avoiding people? … What would life be like if alcohol weren’t around anymore?”

Special Techniques in Dual Diagnosis

If your patient has a substance abuse problem, chances are high that he has another psychiatric disorder, as well. According to the largest American epidemiologic study to look at this question, 37% of alcoholics and 53% of drug abusers have had another psychiatric disorder at some point in their lives (Regier et al. 1990). Using a particularly common example, that of depression combined with alcoholism, two disorders can interact with each other in two ways: Depression can drive a person to drink, or drinking can cause depression, either directly via a depressant effect on the nerve cells or indirectly via the psychosocial chaos that alcoholism causes.

Patients with dual diagnoses are complicated, and you may need to schedule two sessions to complete your diagnostic assessment. Here are some suggestions for making these assessments easier. For ease of presentation, I use the example of depression and alcoholism, but any other dual diagnoses can be approached similarly.

When was your longest period of sobriety?

You want to identify a period of sobriety lasting at least 2 months, preferably longer. Refer to that period in further questions.

How was your life going during that period? Were you suffering from depression or anxiety?

Try to determine if the patient met DSM-5 criteria for a major depressive episode during her sobriety. It doesn’t count if she was depressed for only a few weeks after she stopped drinking and the depression resolved on its own. That’s the typical course of alcohol-induced depression. Look for depression that was separated from their alcohol use by at least 1 month.

Why did you begin drinking again?

Was it because of depression, or just because the temptation to drink was too great?

Which do you think is a bigger problem for you, alcohol dependence or depression?

Sometimes, the patient will have a good sense as to which disorder is his central problem. However, you should be wary of the antisocial patient who tries to convince you that he is depressed (rather than alcoholic) to obtain disability benefits or a psychiatric admission.