“dronke ... as a Mous” is from Chaucer. I think saying someone “suffers from alcohol use disorder” is a kind replacement for the more shaming and blaming label alcoholic, and saying that someone is “not acting in a skillful way” is perhaps more helpful than calling them sinners.
I would use those terms for others. However, old Anglo-Saxon words such as “drunk” pack more punch. For myself, if I were an alcoholic I might call myself a drunkard, for the poetry of it. And the literary history.
Similarly, I have taken to calling myself old & fat. That is not damning condemnation, it is blunt fact. I like it!
Chaucer’s “drunk as a mouse” may be related to this Medieval folk tale, which shows that some things never change. It made me laugh—(I found it on Wikipedia):
A mouse falls into fermenting beer and cries for help. A passing cat offers to pull it out if it will give him a reward when asked.
However, when the cat later becomes hungry, the mouse refuses to emerge from its hole to satisfy it.
“What about your promise?” the cat asks.
“Ah,” says the mouse, “I was drunk at the time.”
