General practitioners receive a great deal of information about alcohol, its use, and its immediate or potential pathological consequences. This knowledge, primarily originating from hospital-based and specialist physicians, has led to recommendations intended to guide general practitioners in identifying patients with alcohol use disorder and providing them with therapeutic care. However, the relevance and applicability of most of these recommendations are poorly or inadequately assessed in general practice. Consequently, general practitioners, sometimes contrary to the recommendations, are led to develop concepts and practices specific to their patients and working conditions. The originality of this book lies in the comparison of the knowledge and practices of two physicians treating patients with alcohol use disorder in different settings. The authors—a general practitioner in private practice and university professor, and a hospital-based university physician specializing in alcohol addiction—offer, after comparing their respective approaches, a brief overview of current knowledge useful for practice, and a reflection on the specific challenges and difficulties encountered by general practitioners in their work. This is more a book on general medicine for patients with alcohol-related problems than a book on alcohol addiction.
