Overview
Alcohol and drug use screening questionnaires exist to catch risky patterns before they turn into a diagnosable disorder or a medical emergency — they take a few minutes, use plain-language questions about frequency and consequences, and produce a score that's simple to track over time. Primary care visits, workplace wellness programs, and self-directed health checks all rely on the same handful of validated instruments because they've been tested against real outcomes in large populations, not because they're the only way to think about substance use.
This guide is educational content, not a diagnosis or medical advice. Every calculator below scores a published screening questionnaire exactly as it was designed, but a score — high or low — is not the same as a clinical diagnosis of alcohol use disorder or substance use disorder, and it isn't a substitute for evaluation by a doctor, therapist, or addiction specialist. If a result concerns you, or if you're worried about someone else's drinking or drug use, treat the number as a reason to have a conversation with a qualified professional, not as a self-contained answer.
The six tools below move from the fastest alcohol screen to the most detailed, then cover drug use broadly and close with a plain consumption tracker that complements — but doesn't replace — the screening questionnaires. Each step explains what the tool measures, how its scoring works, and what a result range typically signals.
Step 1: Screen Quickly for Risky Drinking with AUDIT-C
AUDIT-C is the three-question consumption subset of the full AUDIT questionnaire, built for situations where a fast screen matters more than full detail — a doctor's intake form, a workplace health check, or a quick self-assessment. It asks how often you drink, how many drinks you typically have on a drinking day, and how often you have six or more drinks on one occasion, each scored 0–4, for a maximum of 12.
A score of 4 or higher in men, or 3 or higher in women, is the standard threshold flagging risky or hazardous drinking in most primary care guidelines, though some protocols use slightly different cutoffs by age or population. Because AUDIT-C only covers consumption, it can miss dependence symptoms or alcohol-related harm that don't show up in frequency and quantity alone — someone who drinks moderately but has memory blackouts or has caused an injury while drinking might score low here despite real risk, which is exactly the gap the full AUDIT questionnaire is built to close.
Use the AUDIT-C Calculator when you want a two-minute read on drinking volume, and treat a score above the threshold as a prompt to run the fuller AUDIT screen next rather than a final answer on its own.
AUDIT-C is widely used precisely because it's short enough to fit on an intake form without discouraging honest answers, and its three questions were chosen because consumption volume and frequency are strong statistical predictors of alcohol-related harm even without the dependence and consequence questions the full AUDIT adds. That tradeoff — speed for depth — is worth keeping in mind: a single high score on AUDIT-C tells you drinking volume is elevated, not why, and not what to do about it beyond seeking a fuller assessment.
Step 2: Get a Full Picture with the Complete AUDIT Questionnaire
The full AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) was developed by the World Health Organization and adds seven questions to the AUDIT-C consumption items: inability to stop drinking once started, drinking interfering with expectations, needing a morning drink after heavy drinking, guilt or remorse after drinking, memory loss from drinking, alcohol-related injury to yourself or others, and a relative, friend, or professional expressing concern. Each item scores 0–4 (the last two are scored 0, 2, or 4), for a maximum of 40 points across all ten questions.
A total score of 8 or higher generally indicates hazardous or harmful drinking, while scores of 15–19 suggest a moderate-to-high likelihood of alcohol dependence and scores of 20 or above indicate high likelihood of dependence requiring further diagnostic evaluation. The extra seven questions matter because they capture dependence symptoms and consequences that pure consumption questions can't — two people who drink the same amount can land in very different risk categories once loss of control, guilt, and harm to self or others are factored in.
The AUDIT Score Calculator walks through all ten questions and totals the weighted score, making it easier to see which specific symptom categories — consumption, dependence, or harm — are driving the overall number.
The AUDIT questionnaire was originally developed for use across primary care settings worldwide, which is part of why it remains one of the most cross-validated alcohol screening tools available — it's been tested in dozens of countries and languages since its introduction, and the score bands (low risk, hazardous, harmful, likely dependence) are consistent across most of those validation studies. That consistency is useful if you're tracking your own score over months or years: a drop from 18 to 9 reflects a real, comparably measured change in risk category, not just noise in how the questions were interpreted.
Step 3: Check for Alcohol Dependence Signs with CAGE
CAGE is one of the oldest and fastest alcohol screening tools, built around four yes/no questions whose first letters give the acronym its name: have you ever felt you should Cut down on your drinking, have people Annoyed you by criticizing your drinking, have you felt Guilty about your drinking, and have you ever had an Eye-opener (a drink first thing in the morning to steady your nerves or get rid of a hangover). Each "yes" scores one point, for a maximum of 4.
A score of 2 or more "yes" answers is the conventional threshold suggesting a significant likelihood of alcohol dependence and is generally treated as reason for further clinical evaluation, though even a single "yes" — particularly to the eye-opener question — is sometimes considered clinically meaningful on its own. Unlike AUDIT-C, CAGE doesn't ask about current drinking volume at all; it's oriented toward lifetime patterns of dependence rather than recent consumption, so a person who drinks heavily but hasn't yet developed dependence symptoms can score 0 despite genuine risk.
The CAGE Questionnaire Calculator scores all four questions in under a minute — its speed is the whole point, which is why it remains widely used as a first-pass screen even alongside newer, longer instruments like AUDIT.
One limitation worth knowing: CAGE was validated mainly on adult populations being screened for lifetime dependence patterns, so it tends to perform less well at catching early-stage or binge-pattern risky drinking that hasn't yet produced guilt, criticism from others, or morning drinking. Pairing a CAGE score with AUDIT-C's consumption questions covers both angles — recent volume and lifetime dependence signs — better than either tool alone.
Step 4: Screen for Drug Use Patterns with DUDIT
DUDIT (Drug Use Disorders Identification Test) mirrors the structure and logic of AUDIT but applies it to drug use rather than alcohol specifically, covering any substance from cannabis to prescription misuse to illicit drugs. The version on this site is a simplified six-question self-check covering frequency of use, using multiple drugs in a single session, inability to stop once started, failed expectations because of use, guilt about use, and others expressing concern — a condensed version of the full 11-item clinical DUDIT used in some healthcare settings.
Because it doesn't ask which specific substance is involved, DUDIT works as a general drug-use screen rather than a substance-specific diagnostic tool; a high score signals a pattern worth discussing further, but pinning down which substance and what level of use requires a follow-up conversation with a professional. The scoring logic parallels AUDIT closely enough that someone familiar with AUDIT-C or the full AUDIT will recognize the question format immediately.
The DUDIT Calculator totals the six weighted responses and is best used as a starting point for a broader conversation about drug use rather than a stand-alone assessment, since drug use patterns vary far more by substance than alcohol use does.
Because the tool asks about drug use in general terms rather than by specific substance, it's most reliable as a first pass — someone using a single substance occasionally and someone using several substances in risky combinations could score similarly if the frequency and consequence answers land the same way. If DUDIT flags a concern, following up with a substance-specific conversation (which drug, how much, how often) with a professional will do more to clarify actual risk than repeating the same general screen.
Step 5: Reflect on Substance Use Consequences with the Addiction Calculator
Where AUDIT, CAGE, and DUDIT are built around specific, validated clinical questionnaires, the Addiction Calculator is a broader self-reflection tool covering behavior patterns common across substances: using more than intended, trying and failing to cut down, experiencing cravings, letting use affect responsibilities at work, school, or home, continuing use despite known problems, and needing more of a substance over time to get the same effect (tolerance).
This list closely tracks the behavioral criteria clinicians use when evaluating substance use disorder in the DSM-5, though the calculator condenses them into six self-report items rather than a full clinical interview. It's most useful as a checkpoint when a substance or behavior doesn't fit neatly into the alcohol- or drug-specific tools above, or when you want a plain-language gut check on whether a pattern of use has started to look like dependence rather than casual or social use.
The Addiction Calculator totals your responses into a single score, and — as with every tool in this guide — a higher result is a reason to talk to a professional, not a self-diagnosis to act on alone.
Because it's substance-agnostic, this calculator is often the right starting point when you're not sure which of the more specific tools above applies — someone unsure whether their relationship with a prescription medication, cannabis, or even a non-substance behavior warrants concern can use it as a first checkpoint before deciding whether a more targeted screen or a direct conversation with a provider is the next step.
Step 6: Track What You're Actually Drinking with the Alcohol Unit Calculator
Screening questionnaires ask about patterns and consequences, but they don't tell you exactly how much pure alcohol is in a given drink — that's what the Alcohol Unit Calculator does. It takes the volume of a drink in milliliters and its ABV (alcohol by volume) percentage and converts that into alcohol units and milliliters of pure alcohol, using the standard units formula (volume × ABV% × 0.789, the density of ethanol, divided by 1,000).
This matters for interpreting your AUDIT-C or AUDIT answers accurately: "how many drinks" only means something consistent if you know how much alcohol is actually in each one, and a tall pour of 14% wine contains meaningfully more alcohol than a standard 12 oz, 5% beer even though both might get counted as "one drink" casually. Comparing your logged units against national drinking guidelines — many of which cap low-risk drinking around 14 units per week — gives a more precise read than counting drinks alone, and it's a useful complement to a BAC estimate if you're trying to understand intoxication level rather than long-term consumption.
Use the Alcohol Unit Calculator alongside AUDIT-C or the full AUDIT to translate vague "how many drinks" answers into a precise, comparable number.
Key Terms
- AUDIT-C — the three-question consumption subset of the full AUDIT questionnaire, used as a fast alcohol screening tool
- AUDIT — the full 10-question WHO Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, combining consumption, dependence, and harm questions
- CAGE — a four-question lifetime alcohol dependence screen (Cut down, Annoyed, Guilty, Eye-opener)
- DUDIT — a drug-use screening questionnaire structured like AUDIT but covering substances broadly rather than alcohol specifically
- Standard Drink — a fixed measure of pure alcohol (14 grams in the US) used to compare beer, wine, and spirits regardless of serving size
- BAC — Blood Alcohol Content, the percentage of alcohol in the bloodstream, distinct from the unit count a drink contains
- Substance Use Disorder — the clinical diagnosis these screening tools are designed to flag for further evaluation, not to establish on their own