When I was a young pup, we booze hounds were referred to as dipsomaniacs. Odd word that haven’t heard for years, replaced by “alcoholic,” I guess.
Musing: If somebody addicted to alcohol is an alcoholic, why isn’t a tobacco addict called a “tobbacoic?”
And of course we all know a shopaholic is addicted to shopahol. I’ve read the term “dipso,” but never heard anyone actually use it. Perhaps it’s time for a renaissance.
Wouldn’t that be ‘tobaccoholic’? The ending ‘-holic’ seems to have emerged to mean ‘person addicted to whatever the word it’s connected to is’.
I never actually knew what a dipsomaniac was.
I’m a rageholic. I’m addicted to rageohol.
Not that it’s at all accurate, but to me for some reason “dipsomaniac” means someone in a far more advanced stage of alcoholism than “alcoholic”. When I think of a dipsomaniac, I think of someone about two drinks away from alcohol poisoning and death. I don’t know how I came to that shade of definition.
Well, it sounds more clinical, and I think your understanding of the word is shared by most people. What Geoff is referring to is the midcentury use of the word as a slang exaggeration for “heavy drinker.”
If the substance in question is snuff, then dipsomaniac may still be the correct word to use. 
Now cut that out.
Dipsomania comes from the combination of the Greek word for thirst, “dipsa”, and “mania” meaning excessive or unreasonable indugence in something.
If you want to talk cute lingo, in the movie Tunnel of Love, wife Doris Day asks husband Richard Widmark, who reeks of gin, “Did you fall into a juniper bush?”
I’ve used the term dipsomaniac a few times in the recent past, mostly in work e-mail chains that are a source of entertainment to coworkers and a creative outlet for me “At least there is one literate dipsomaniac among you,”) but grew weary of having to explain the definition.
Now I save my four-bit words for the SMDB.
Stranger
I’ll drink to that.