WE DRANK . . . Bits and Pieces, May, 1990, p. 18

A member of Alcoholics Anonymous once sent columnist Ann Landers the following:

We drank for happiness and became unhappy.
We drank for joy and became miserable.
We drank for sociability and became argumentative.
We drank for sophistication and became obnoxious.
We drank for friendship and made enemies.
We drank for sleep and awakened without rest.
We drank for strength and felt weak.
We drank “medicinally” and acquired health problems.
We drank for relaxation and got the shakes.
We drank for bravery and became afraid.
We drank for confidence and became doubtful.
We drank to make conversation easier and slurred our speech.
We drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell.
We drank to forget and were forever haunted.
We drank for freedom and became slaves.
We drank to erase problems and saw them multiply.
We drank to cope with life and invited death.

GENETIC OR CHARACTER US News 4/21/97 p. 77

The disease model for alcoholism is practically a secular religion in this country, embraced by psychiatry, most treatment clinics, and (perhaps most important) by AA. What this means it that those seeking help for excessive drinking are told they have a disease (though the exact nature of the disease is unknown), that it's a probably genetic condition, and that the only treatment is abstinence.

But the evidence is not strong enough to support these claims. There are several theories of how genes might lead to excessive drinking. A genetic insensitivity to alcohol, for example, might cause certain people to drink more; or alcoholics might metabolize alcohol differently; or they may have inherited a certain personality type that' prone to risk taking or stimulus seeking. While studies of family pedigrees and adoptees have on occasion indicated a familial pattern for a particular form of alcoholism (early onset disorder in men, for example) , just as often they reveal no pattern. This shouldn't be all that surprising, given the difficulty of defining alcoholism. Some researchers identify alcoholics by their drunk driving record, while others focus on withdrawal symptoms or daily consumption. This is what geneticists call a "dirty phenotype"; people drink too much in so many different ways that the trait itself is hard to define, so family patterns are all over the place, and often contradictory.

Given these methodological problems, researchers have been trying to locate an actual gene (or genes) that might be involved in alcoholism. A 1990 study reported that a severe form of the disorder (most of the subjects in the study had cirrhosis of the liver) was linked to a gene that codes for a chemical receptor for the neuro-transmitter dopamine. The researchers even developed and patented a test for the genetic mutation, but subsequent attempts to confirm the dopamine connection have failed.

The issues of choice and responsibility come up again and again in discussions of alcoholism and other addictive disorders. Even if scientists were to identify a gene (or genes) that create a susceptibility to alcoholism, it's hard to know what this genetic "loading" would mean. It certainly wouldn't lead to alcoholism in a culture that didn't condone drinking - among the Amish for example - so it's not deterministic in the strictest sense. Even in a culture where drinking is common, there are clearly a lot of complicated choices involved in living an alcoholic life; it's difficult to make the leap from DNA to those choices. While few would want to return to the time when heavy drinking was condemned as strictly a moral failing or character flaw, many are concerned that the widely accepted disease model of alcoholism actually provides people with an excuse for their destructive behavior.

STATISTICS ON DEATH RELATED TO ALCOHOL - AFA Journal June 1990

An alcohol-related crash kills someone in the US every 22 minutes. At any minute, one of 50 drivers on the road is drunk and every weekend night, one out 10 drivers is drunk.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, there are more than 105,000 alcohol-related deaths annually in the US due to drunken drivers and such diseases as cirrhosis of the liver.

Using 1987 figures, researchers calculate that those deaths represent a loss of about 2.7 million years of life or 26 years of expected life for each death.

WHY DRINK Richard Blummer as quoted in R.Digest 1/90 p.161

We drink for joy and become miserable. We drink for sociability and become argumentative. We drink for sophistication and become obnoxious. We drink to help us sleep and awake exhausted. We drink for exhilaration and end up depressed.

We drink to gain confidence and become afraid. We drink to make conversation flow and become incoherent. We drink to diminish our problems and see them multiply.

ALCOHOL'S LONG RANGE EFFECTS - Did you know?

* Alcohol is the most abused drug in America?

* Alcohol kills at least 86,000 people a year?

* Alcohol contributes to 70% of all sexual abuse?

* Alcohol contributes to 50% of spouse abuse?

* Alcohol contributes to 38% of all child abuse?

* Alcohol contributes to 52% of all rapes?

* Alcohol contributes to 50% of all traffic fatalities?

* Women's bodies deteriorate faster than men's from alcohol abuse?

* Drinking during pregnancy is one of the leading cause of mental retardation in infants?

* One third of all alcoholics are women?

* there is a greater increase in the # of young female drinkers that young male drinkers?

WHO WILL BECOME AN ALCOHOLIC? American Health June 1994 p. 16

A study now suggests that young people who seem most in control may be at greatest risk for alcoholism in the long run. Over a 10 year period, men who initially showed a high tolerance for alcohol were more than 4 times as likely to become alcoholics as more susceptible drinkers who also had an alcoholic parent, the risks were even greater - nearly 60% of that group became alcohol abusers after 10 years.

Between 1979 and 1983, Dr. Marc Schuckit, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Diego Medical School, and his colleagues interviewed 454 20 year old men who had similar drinking habits: Half had an alcoholic father and half had no family history of alcoholism. The researchers rated sensitivity to alcohol according to subjective feelings of "Sleepiness" or floating sensations" and also by how subjects scored on coordination tests after having about 4 drinks.

A decade later, 43% of those who had scored in the lowest 20% on the original test - that is, those who had been least affected by alcohol - had gone on to become full fledged alcoholics, while only 11% of those who had been most sensitive to alcohol had turned into chronic abusers. Among those who had both an alcoholic father and a low sensitivity to alcohol, fully 56% had become alcoholics, compared with only 14% of the alcoholics' sons who were alcohol sensitive 10 years earlier.