I appreciate that you are trying to raise awareness of more severe, or at least more violent, alcoholism, but at the same time, you are raising denial other forms of alcoholism.
High-functioning alcoholics... "Have difficulty viewing themselves as alcoholics because they do not fit the stereotypical image and because they feel their lives are manageable, [and] avoid recovery help."
Saying that people who are high-functioning are not real alcoholics is just going to make them even less likely to admit they have a problem and seek help.
Both types of alcoholism are important and trying to raise awareness of one by denying the other is not helpful to alcoholics of either type.
I'm a high functioning alcoholic, and denial is extraordinarily strong amongst us (other HFAs). Denial is just another enabler to being essentially blotto all the time.
I lived in complete denial for 15 years before some of my HFA buddies started burning their lives down in rather spectacular ways.
I didn't want my life to serve as a warning to others, so I quit. Luckily, I didn't lose anything along the way, but many have, even many of the HFA's I used to know.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-functioning_alcoholic
High-functioning alcoholics... "Have difficulty viewing themselves as alcoholics because they do not fit the stereotypical image and because they feel their lives are manageable, [and] avoid recovery help."
Saying that people who are high-functioning are not real alcoholics is just going to make them even less likely to admit they have a problem and seek help.
Both types of alcoholism are important and trying to raise awareness of one by denying the other is not helpful to alcoholics of either type.