Overview
“Dipsomania” is an outdated term to describe habitual compulsions to drink alcohol.
History and Etymology
In the mid-19th century Victorian era, the term arose into prominence among physicians and psychiatrists as part of other monomanic compulsions like pyromania, kleptomania, and nymphomania, which put it into a pathologized and medicalized category of human behavior rather than a simple moral or willpower issue. When Magnus Huss introduced the term “alcoholism”, the two terms captured different aspects of what we now call “alcohol use disorder.” Alcoholism referred to chronic daily drinking while dipsomania referred to binge-drinking episodes.