Hazardous drinking describes heavy drinking that places an individual at risk for future harm. Harmful drinking and alcohol abuse are defined as drinking that causes mental or physical damage to the individual. These descriptive terms were devised to identify individuals who would benefit from brief interventions and are assessed using screening questionnaires such as the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Alcohol dependence (AD) was, until recently, defined according to the DSM-IV and required the presence of 3 or more of 7 criteria in a 12-month period. The DSM-IV made a distinction between alcohol abuse and dependence that was removed under DSM-V and replaced with ‘mild’ to ‘severe’ definitions of AUD. Genetic studies encompass the wide range of alcohol use phenotypes; in this review we mirror the language used in the original studies.
