Do you have a friend or loved one who you think might be a closet alcoholic? Maybe you’ve noticed some suspicious behavior, or maybe they are just drinking more than usual in front of you, but still hiding their consumption from the rest of the world. At any rate, you have become suspicious for some reason, and you want to look into it further.

What signs are there that you can look for to confirm this?

1) For one thing, look for the obvious first: heavy drinking. If the person is drinking large amounts of alcohol, and you are noticing it more and more frequently, then this is your biggest clue right there.

2) Calling in sick to work or avoiding normal obligations. If the person is ducking their responsibilities more and more often, such as missing appointments or calling in sick to work on a regular basis, then this is another sign that they might be a closet alcoholic.

3) Ducking out early from commitments - this is a sign that someone wants to or needs to go start drinking. If they just don’t stick around like they used to, perhaps this is the reason for it? If they are hiding their drinking then they need to get away from people so they can isolate more and more often.

4) Isolation. They are a closet drinker so they need to be alone as much as possible. So if you notice someone isolating a lot then this can be another sign.

5) Tendency to lie about their drinking – if someone continues to lie to you about their drinking, then this is another strong indicator that there is a real problem there.

Basically, the closet drinker is in denial, and they are lying both to themselves and to the rest of the world. They generally believe that they do not have a real problem, because they have been able to basically keep it MOSTLY under control for so long. They have not really been “found out” and exposed as the full fledged alcoholic that they really are, so their denial is much stronger than it would be in many other drinkers. They are still trying to hold things together and prove to themselves and to the rest of the world that they are not really a true alcoholic. Well, this doesn’t really fly if you know what to look for and you pick up on all the clues.