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If you're filing for social security disability or SSI disability and your claim is based, at least in part, on a mental impairment of some kind, you may want to be careful about mentioning current or even past use of alchohol or drugs. In the social security disability process (this includes SSI disability as well), there is a concept known as DAA materiality. The DAA part stands for drug and alcohol abuse . How this term officially plays a role in the social security disability system is this: if you have a physical impairment or mental condition for which you are filing and it can be shown that, minus the effects of your drug or alcohol use, the condition would not be disabling, your claim may potentially be denied. Obviously, DAA materiality means one thing for any individual filing for disability -- you really don't need a mention of drug or alcohol abuse anywhere in your medical records or mental health treatment records. DAA materiality is, of course, a subjective concept. In the case of alcohol, many adults drink either socially or infrequently and such usage does not even begin to approach a reasonable definition of abuse. However, if you keep in mind the fact that the social security administration denies more than two-thirds of all initial claims for disability and, further, that more than eighty percent of all first appeals (reconsideration appeals) are likewise denied, you can see that the disability examiners who decide the outcome of claims are, essentially, operating within an agency-wide culture of denial. In this culture of disability claim denial, it is not unusual in the least for disability examiners to use even the barest medical record documentation to deny cases. This includes short notes in a family doctor's records such as "patient admits to occasional alcohol use" or "patient consumed three beers the previous day". DAA materiality, in short, becomes an easy way for the social security administration to deny claims even when a claimant's records make zero mention of "abuse", but, instead, simply mention occasional or even "past" use of a substance such as alcohol (but also including cannabis i.e. marijuna). For this reason, an individual who wishes to qualify for disability should probably be careful when mentioning the use of a substance, simply to avoid giving the social security administration an easy way to deny a claim. Claimants who mention the use of a substance, either on their disability application paperwork or disability appeal paperwork may run the risk of being penalized by a DDS (disability determination services, the agency that makes decisions on social security disability and SSI disability claims) claims examiner. Even if the examiner does not view the mention of occasional alcohol use as damaging to a claimant's case, the examiner's supervisor or the examiner's unit psychological consultant (this individual is usually a Ph.D. level psychologist who works, alongside examiners, to process claims) may make the assumption that your "alcohol or cannabis use" plays too heavily into your mental disorder (such as bipolar disorder, depression, etc) 
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