1. Chronic alcohol abuse, dependence, or addiction; chronic excessive drinking of alcoholic beverages resulting in impairment of health and/or social or occupational functioning, and increasing adaptation to the effects of alcohol requiring increasing doses to achieve and sustain a desired effect; specific signs and symptoms of withdrawal usually are shown when one stops such drinking.
2. "Alcohol dependence" (currently the preferred term); "alcohol addiction".

The terms refer to a variety of disorders associated with the repetitive consumption of alcohol, usually over a long period of time, in amounts that the drinker is unable to handle physiologically, emotionally, or socially.

Bourbonic plague.