"I'm precisely the kind of nice, upper-middle-class white girl whose relationship with substances has been treated as benign or pitiable, a cause for concern, or a shrug, rather than a punishment." I read this from Leslie Jamison a while back. She wrote it in Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, a memoir on alcohol addiction that has been translated into Spanish (The imprint of the days, Anagrama). I recognized myself, despite the differences: I've never been accused of having a painful, violent relationship with alcohol. Something in me has saved me. Perhaps it has to do with the gesture, the posture. The family they think I come from. The very white skin. The relative public exposure.

Barcelona wants to change the way alcohol is perceived and accessed in the city to "denormalize" its consumption and reduce the opportunities for access. This is the main line of action of the new Action Plan on Drugs and Addictions 2025-2028, a document that incorporates a gender perspective for the first time since the first program was launched in 1987. "Alcohol continues to be the most consumed psychoactive substance in the Catalan capital and is the main reason for starting treatment, both in men and women," said Marta Villanueva, Councilor for Health at Barcelona City Council, during the presentation of the plan.

Eva Boiso hasn't had a drink for a year, something unthinkable when she began detox treatment last August. She recalls how she went from being a social drinker to compulsive drinking almost without realizing it, driven by many different problems that led her to take refuge in addiction. For three years, she says, she was dominated by alcohol, arguments, and lies. She quit her job to keep drinking, which she did mostly in secret, at home, only in sight of her children and partner. She didn't know how to get out of this situation. She was depressed and could drink 16 beers in an afternoon, but no matter how many cans she drank, she couldn't calm her discomfort, which was growing. Finally, her children gave her an ultimatum: she had to get help because they couldn't take it anymore at home.

Spain is the country with the cheapest alcohol in the eurozone and the fifth with the lowest prices in the entire European Union. Excessive alcohol consumption carries the risk of developing a wide range of diseases, such as cancer of the pharynx, larynx, liver, esophagus, oral cavity, and especially colon and rectal cancer in men, and breast cancer in women, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Therefore, the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) advocates that taxes on alcoholic beverages should be tightened to mitigate their impact on health and also reduce healthcare spending. It estimates that, in Spain, if the price of cheaper beverages, such as wine and beer, increases by between 40% and 130%, there would be "a direct and significant effect" on the reduction of liver disease.

Eva Tenorio Álvarez, 47, says that she only drank with friends, at social events, when she went out to party… She didn't do it every day and she didn't have alcohol at home either. In fact, her acquaintances didn't consider her to be an alcoholic, but rather a drunkard.

This Sunday, in the dossier, we focus on what is known as functional alcoholism, that is, what affects people who, at first glance, have a normal life but are dependent on alcohol that affects their daily functioning, although sometimes it is difficult to identify the origin of the symptoms. We have spoken with addicts and experts to put a face and voice to a problem that affects many more people than we think. Maybe you are an alcoholic and you don't know it, or maybe someone close to you is. We must break the taboo and start talking about it openly.

Taking semaglutide drugs – an active ingredient that mimics a hormone that regulates blood glucose levels and is used for diabetes and, more recently, against obesity – reduces alcohol consumption, according to research from the University of Southern California (USC) published this Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. This is a side effect that has been reported by doctors and patients around the world in recent years, due to the popularization of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, but which had not been confirmed until now. According to this research, people who use these drugs have a reduced desire to drink, so they not only consume less alcohol, but they do so less often.