Alcoholics (100 men, mean age 41) who had experienced many of 36 possible symptoms of withdrawal were studied. The 10 most specific (crude prevalence/filtered prevalence) symptoms were whole body shakes, face shakes, hand and finger shakes, cannot face day, panicky, guilty, nausea, visual hallucinations, tiredness and choking lump in throat. These symptoms had provoked drinking to varying degrees. Only 29% of the patients drank in response to nightmares, to hands or fingers shaking, 69%, to anxiety, 85% and to craving, 90%. The degree of relief was usually considerable. Of those who drank when depressed 70% were relieved by alcohol. Of the 10 leading symptoms, body shakes, hand or finger shake, panicky and choking lump in throat were relieved by further drinking in over 90% of the patients. With 1 exception (quilty) the remaining 10 leading symptoms were relieved in over 80%. Other symptoms too were relieved by drinking, especially anxiety (82%), depression (70%), sleeping badly (71%), tinnitus (78%) and muscle cramps (78%). Craving was least alleviated by further drinking (36%). Principal component analysis produced 2 clusters of withdrawal symptoms, an affect disturbance syndrome (8 symptoms) and a physical disturbance syndrome (22 symptoms). Each cluster correlated significantly with quantity of alcohol in the last 28 days and with number of days drinking. Only the physical withdrawal cluster correlated significantly with previous delirium tremens, reduced alcohol tolerance, convulsions ever, and having stolen to buy alcohol. Both physical and affective clusters and nonwithdrawal symptoms (not in either cluster) correlated significantly with the neuroticism score of the Eysenck Personality Inventory but only the physical withdrawal cluster was positively correlated with the extroversion score.