Is my best friend an alcoholic? Need help navigating this situation

First post on here, I don’t really know if this will help me figure out what to do or not but here it goes. My best friend in the whole world, a freaking amazing person that I plan to have in my life for the rest of my life, has started drinking what I think is a lot, and every day. I’m not a big drinker, don’t get me wrong I have my fun and go out and have a little too much sometimes but sometimes I go a whole week without even having a drop. It’s just not my thing. However, my best friend is mostly a beer/bourbon drinker for the most part but has also been buying a lot of those canned alcoholic drinks that are flavored( like the lemonades and captain Morgan things) and she’s been trying all sorts of different brands and everything. Anyway, she has been routinely having five, six, seven, sometimes 10 a night, and I’ve seen her have more than that. She usually seems to not go over eight but occasionally she does. She gets visibly drunk and this is all within 4 to 5 hours usually. She does this with the beers and with the flavored alcoholic beverages. I’ve caught her a few times over the last couple months shotgunning a beer before going back to work. She plays it off as something that’s funny but with what I’m saying I’m genuinely concerned.

She complains about having stomach issues and stuff and I’ve suggested maybe easing up on the alcohol, which she did for about half a day and then she justified drinking the 7 beers she had left because they were “just sitting there”… I told her they’re not about to go bad or anything are they? And she said no… But she still drink all of them. The next day she went and got two more large boxes of alcoholic drinks. She also makes any excuses to drink, and blames “frustrations“ at work make her need to drink.

I’m beginning to get more concerned about her. With the stomach issues and other health issues, to me it seems like the over consumption of alcohol would be one of the biggest factors in her discomfort. She seems to refuse to do anything about the actual issues other than just complain. I do have the suspicion that she may be a little depressed, as her family lives across the country basically and she cannot afford to go see them this year. She’s very very close with her family and I think it is hurting her, however I think she’s digging herself into a deeper hole mentally and physically by drinking this much. Thankfully, two days ago she started therapy. I’m really hoping that this will help her.

She’s also had a lot of negativity the last few months, especially towards things at work, and I wonder if she’s frustrated that she financially isn’t in a terrific spot and that she’s simply wanting to vent her frustrations and she is projecting it onto things at work. For reference most of the things she’s complained about are things that we have to do every day in our jobs, they are not that big of a deal, and it is literally part of the description of what we signed up for. And she’s also gotten very angry with people at work for no reason other than them doing their jobs. I’ve tried to say this to her in a gentle way when she is frustrated about something but I don’t want to make her feel like I’m not listening to her, but it has gotten to the point where it has started to frustrate me. For reference we also work at the same place and I have more to do in a day with the responsibilities that I’ve been given, but I also love my job dearly and I knew what I signed up for when I came to work here. She doesn’t even want to do the basic things that we are expected to do frequently, and complains about other people doing something and then she turns around and does the same thing. To me, from the outside it looks like she’s just frustrated in general, and I’m wondering if the drinking and complaining is a coping mechanism.

I’ve tried to talk to her about it before, and she seems to brush it off or tries to skirt around what I’m asking. Last night she was about eight or nine drinks deep and she went to the bathroom to go hang over the toilet and I tried to talk to her about how much she has been drinking but she was out of it and I wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to discuss this with her. I feel like I’m failing her as a friend, but I also don’t want to push her to feel ashamed because she isn’t always the nicest to herself with the way she thinks about herself. But I’m also seeing my once bubbly and cheerful friend that loved her job turn bitter and not taking care of herself.

Any advice would be appreciated, I don’t even know if anyone will see this though. I just really miss my friend and want to know if there’s any way to help her or if there’s a better way to approach this, because every time I’ve tried to talk to her about being depressed or drinking too much it just seems like I never approach it correctly but I’m afraid of upsetting her and making her feel like I’m not trying to be understanding.

*Apologies for the novel, truthfully it felt good just putting that out there and seeing it and I just kept going 🙃