Alcoholism?

Yesterday, a group did a very nice panel presentation about the role of drinking in The Sun Also Rises. The group's article said that basically all of the characters in the book were alcoholics, but for some reason, while I was reading, I recognized some of the characters as alcohol-dependent, but not all.

Let's take, for our first example, Brett. I definitely thought she was dependent on alcohol, because the beginning of almost every scene involves some line of hers saying, "Can't a chap get a drink?" or something along those lines. She is almost always drunk, or needing a drink, and even if she's a "good drunk" according to Jake, she is still probably an alcoholic.

However, I did not read Jake as an alcoholic. He get's drunk, yes, but he's a good drunk, and he never says anything about needing a drink. He drinks because the alcohol is there, or because others are drinking, or because he enjoys the actual drinking itself. For me, that did not come off as being someone who can't go thirty minutes without a drink.

I don't know what light some sort of medical opinion would shed on this situation, in terms of who is clinically an alcoholic and who is not, but I didn't think all of the characters were alcoholics. They definitely drink wayyyy too much, I don't deny that, but for some reason, some of the characters, Jake especially, did not strike me as being alcoholics. I'm not quite sure if this distinction makes sense, or even exists, but that was how I read the characters.