People can drink themselves into alcoholism.

“Alcoholism” is popularly thought to be a situation where people drink too much, too often, for too long, and they negatively affect their own lives and those of others through their drinking. In this sense, the above statement is correct. On the other hand, “alcoholism” is technically the disease of alcohol dependence. The disease has little to do with overdrinking and frequency of drinking, for some people become dependent quickly and quite easily, whereas others who drink a lot over a long period of time never fulfill the diagnostic criteria for “dependence”.