I hate the words “alcoholic” and “alcoholism.” I don’t hate them because I’m in denial; I freely admit that I have a pathological propensity to consume too much alcohol despite injurious consequences—and have admitted it since I was 19 years old. I just don’t like the words or the suggestion that “alcoholic” is an identity.

Because of the identity component, “alcoholic” is the more offensive word. It’s “alcohol” plus a suffix that means “having the nature, the form, or the character of.” It’s easy to see how a drink can be alcoholic, not so easy to imagine how a person might be–unless you know some history.

For centuries in Europe, people thought that digestion worked backwards with alcohol. Rather than you digesting it, it digested you. If you drank enough of it, alcohol transformed you into itself. This transformation was railed against in sermons and penitential books for hundreds of years. It was physically represented by the punishment known as the Drunkard’s Cloak, a giant ale barrel that drunks had to wear. Walking around inside a barrel is broadcasting that you have the nature, the form, and the character of alcohol. It’s deeply humiliating, as it’s meant to be. Why would we want to use a word that does exactly the same thing?

And then there’s the ridiculous extension of the “-aholic” suffix to, well, everything. There are workaholics, sexaholics, shopaholics, and rageaholics; there are golfaholics and hugaholics and tweetaholics. In fact, Wikipedia has 42 pages of “-aholisms.” I sometimes want to punch people who tell me they’re cakeaholics, just as I’m sure people with malignancies sometimes want to punch people who describe a neighbor’s unmowed lawn as “a cancer on our block.” But I don’t because lots of painful words are used metaphorically (“war,” for instance), and I don’t believe in punching people for using figurative language.

But there is a serious issue in the appropriation of the “-aholic” and “-aholism” suffix, and it has to do with problems that arise when principles specific to one set of behaviors (drinking too much) are generalized to other behaviors (doing something else too much). In 2008, French novelist Alix de Saint-André decided to treat her smoking addiction with Baclofen, an experimental drug for alcohol use disorders. She wasn’t “alcoholic;” she was hooked on tobacco but thought, “une dépendance est à peu près comme un autre, non?” (“one addiction is pretty much like another, right?”) Saint-André took Baclofen, lots of it, and suffered a terrible reaction. Since that time, instead of admitting she made a rash categorical error, she has campaigned against one of the few medications that actually seem to help some people with severe alcohol use disorders. In rare press coverage of Baclofen research, her story features prominently—not as a warning against all-addictions-are-alike thinking but as a warning against pharmacological approaches to addiction. Stupidité!

But, besides all that, “alcoholism” is an ungainly term, the word “alcohol” plus the suffix “ism,” which indicates a system of belief, a set of practices, a condition. Most “isms” involve all three: colonialism, for example, or ecofeminism or empiricism. Some, like “absenteeism,” just involve practices, but these examples are uncommon. Some “isms” are proudly embraced by their adherents; some are imposed on unwilling subjects. If narcissism or totalitarianism had a flag, even a cool one, not too many people would march behind it. On the spectrum of popular appeal, I’d say alcoholism is about halfway between Marxism and botulism.

Now, instead of “alcoholism,” we have “alcohol use disorder.” That phrase disentangles the affliction from the person suffering it, which is really important. But I have to admit that “alcohol use disorder” is a mouthful. Three words, seven syllables, a dactyl plus two trochees: not exactly mellifluous. I use it, but I notice every time how ungainly it makes my sentences, and I long for a better term.

If I were clever enough, this would be the moment at which I would unveil a cunning new word to replace “alcoholic,” “alcoholism,” and “alcohol use disorder,” but I am not a good namer of things. So I’m going to wait for somebody else to do it and jump on the bandwagon.

The best I can do is look at some names that have been used in the past and see if any of them are better than what we have now. “Intemperancy” is the oldest, but it’s built around a really scary word, so no. “Bibacity” and “bibulousness” are okay, but most people wouldn’t be able to guess what they mean. People could guess at “toperism,” but they’d probably guess that it’s a compulsion to trim shrubbery into animal shapes.

My favorite is a classic from the mid-19th century: “dipsomania.” I like the term because it focuses on thirst. This manic thirst is what distinguishes me from someone who just drinks a lot but doesn’t have a problem with alcohol. Over a lifetime, I’ve drunk far less alcohol than most “social” drinkers. I don’t have an “ism” relationship with alcohol; I mostly don’t have any relationship at all. But I have the manic thirst. I had it from the moment I took my first burning gulp of grain alcohol at twelve, and I’ll have it until I die. This is not an article of faith, by the way; it’s a thoroughly tested fact.

This maniacal thirst is the primal problem. If I understand the true nature of this craving; if I understand the conditions that provoke it (not just the psychological conditions or the social triggers but the whole cultural matrix), if I can calmly watch it arise and intensify and pass away, I will have come a long way toward solving my problem.

There’s another advantage to “dipsomania,” a related word that is even more useful: “dipsogen.” A dipsogen is something that provokes thirst. It’s a perfect word to describe those things that the alcohol industry does to trigger dipsomania so that we’ll all continue to drink way more than we should for way longer than we should. In the essay called “Seduction in the Supermarket,” I describe a couple of dipsogens, but you probably see or hear hundreds every day. There’s no word like “dipsogen” in the “alcoholism” family.

There is also, unfortunately “dipsomaniac,” which raises the same problem as “alcoholic” and “drunkard” before it.” So, in the end, we still need brand new words to describe alcohol problems.