""Do you really think I don't know about alcoholism or dependency, which are clinical misfortunes; or their difference from wilful teenage binge-drinking to shock & annoy the bourgeois society of their elders,""

Mike, you should perhaps apply for the job of informing hard pressed A&E staff as to the diagnosis of each and every patient who arrives suffering either from self inflicted alcohol poisoning, or injury sustained therefrom, or from the effects of alcoholism which can strike young or old.

Since you are such a convinced diagnostician, you might be quite chastened by the likely response from the real professionals. It should at the least be educational.

Don T.