It sounds to me like she's drinking too heavily but isn't necessarily addicted. She has no-alcohol days, she doesn't normally get so drunk that she's puking and hung over and so forth, and your presence acts as a brake on drinking. I wonder if she'd be a candidate for something like Down Your Drink, where people get drinking under control before it becomes an actual addiction?

"Alcoholic" isn't a diagnosis; it's a folk term for people addicted to alcohol. You won't find it in the DSM.

It sounds like she has avoided AA exposure, which makes moderation more achievable. I guess my question for her would be this -- if she drinks less alcohol than usual, say 2 instead of 5, how is she with that? Someone who's addicted will find that incredibly frustrating. It's doable for one day unless the addiction has gotten really bad, but the experience of "want more want more want more" is hard to mistake.

It's possible that she's already addicted. Some people are addicted despite their alcohol consumption seeming low to the rest of us. Certainly she's drinking more than average, and it sounds like she's having trouble cutting back or quitting.

There's nothing wrong with loving her and wanting to help her. When I went through the cure, I gave my husband my blessing to ask if I'd taken the pill. If you aren't going to have any more business trips over the next six months or so, that might be enough time for her to finish the cure and actually not want any more alcohol.

She's the only one who knows if she's a good candidate or not.

This blog entry might provide some points to ponder:

http://naltrexonekey.blogspot.com/2014/ ... ethod.html