Tests what determine alcohol abuse include:
• questionnaires;
• urine tests;
• blood alcohol tests.

Health care professionals use questionnaires designed to elicit patterns of behavior and health complaints that point to alcohol abuse.            

Blood alcohol tests
The recent cases of drinking are usually detectad by blood alcohol tests. Unfortunately, they are not abble to indicate a chronic abuse. With blood tests, the law allows a suspect to have an analysis done at a laboratory. There are two examples of blood alcohol tests. One small bottle for the police and another for the suspect's hospital. Blood tests that indicate the red blood cell size and those that measure a factor called carbohydrate-deficient transferrin are much more reliable. A preservative (sodium fluoride or mercuric chloride) must be added to the vials, otherwise putrefaction begins in a matter of hours. The vials must also not be exposed to sunlight or heat.
 Tests that show the symptoms of typical alcohol-related health problems, such as liver damage or decreased testosterone in men. Blood tests are also effective in convincing problem drinkers that they need help.

Urine tests
Normal urine usually contains more alcohol than blood. The higher concentrations of alcohol in urine will occur over a longer period than in blood. If alcohol is consumed with a full bladder the test can inaccurately underestimate the results. If the person consumed alcohol with an empty bladder and had not voided the test would produce a false positive results. Urinalysis, most of the time, are not favorable to the defendant.
The application of law practice is to take two samples, at 30-minute intervals. Again, precautions must be made to add preservative and keep the samples from exposure to light and heat. Urinalysis requires a bit more sophisticated laboratory equipment than for blood testing. There are such urine test methods:
• chemical tests;
• biochemical tests;
• gas chromatography.

 Gas chromatography is the most widely used because it can recognize alcohol from ketones and aldehydes (a problem that appears with diabetics and people with other disorders that blood tests are not capable of controlling for). While chromatography produces a printout and lends itself to quantitative analysis it always requires the expert testimony of a scientist to be admissible in court. This is because chromatography results are subjects to both quantitative and qualitative interpretation.