The etymological history of the adjective drunkard begins in Bibere a Latin verb that can be translated as “drinking”. This word derived in bibĭtus, which in turn became a term that has now become obsolete: beudo. Finally we come to the notion of drunk, which refers to someone who is drunk.
According to DigoPaul, a drunk individual, therefore, is drunk. This means that it is a person who has consumed an excessive amount of alcoholic beverages and who has suffered different consequences in his body due to this action. For example: “Gentleman, I cannot pour you any more brandy: you are drunk and you must not continue drinking”, “You are drunk again! You have to learn to control yourself ”, “ A drunk driver caused a tragedy on the Camino del Centro ”.
When a person is drunk frequently, it can be said that he suffers from alcoholism. This concept is linked to an organic dependence on alcohol: if the drinker does not consume, he suffers the so-called withdrawal syndrome (characterized by a series of physical reactions that appear when the substance of which the addiction is not ingested).
Alcohol abuse causes many problems in the body and psyche of the drinker, even before the addiction is triggered. Once the drink takes effect, the person may become impulsive, feel dizzy and nauseous, have a headache, be drowsy, or even lose consciousness. At one extreme, consumption can lead to death from cardiorespiratory arrest. That is why all doctors recommend limiting the intake of alcoholic beverages.
All of this can be seen in one of the meanings of the term that we frequently find in dictionaries: “person whose physical and mental capacities have been temporarily altered due to excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages.”
Precisely, drunkenness does not allow us to make full use of our faculties or our body, and this usually leads to embarrassing situations that once the effect of alcohol has passed generate a deep regret in the subject, or infractions of the law that lead to it. to have problems with Justice.
In this case, it is important that we are referring to an adjective of state, which is why it must be conjugated with the verb estar and not with the verb ser. The reason is that this meaning of the word drunk reflects a current and temporary condition of the subject, which will probably change in relation to temporal factors, place or even the influence of other events in their environment. This group of adjectives are used to describe a state of mind, an emotion or a behavior.
At the other extreme are the adjectives that reflect a way of being, a trait of the personality that does not change but rather serves to distinguish an individual from others, and here we must use the verb to be. For example: from the sentence “Juan is a very happy person, he is always seen smiling and with positive energy” we can understand that Juan is characterized by his happiness, which we will generally see him in that state. If, on the other hand, we say “When we arrived, we noticed that Juan was drunk,” we are referring to a passing state that does not represent him.
If we want to refer to a person’s alcoholism, then we must use the verb to be, both with the adjective and with the noun drunk, so that the persistence over time of excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages is appreciated. For example: “My father is a drunk and refuses to accept help to overcome his problem”, “I don’t know what to do anymore, because he doesn’t admit to being a drunk. “
