I. Summary Many Americans believe that one or two drinks per day is safe and in fact beneficial to their health. Alcohol in moderation does provide some benefit to health such as reduction of risk of heart disease, osteoporosis and diabetes. However, alcohol impairs metabolism, and impacts good health and proper nutrition, (Whitney & Rady-Rolfes, 2016). Flax describes how his experience with alcohol in moderation became, “a slow leak that could have left me empty and alone,” (Flax, 2016, p. 1). Those who drink often use the excuse that alcohol is good for them. However, in his article, Why Drinking a Little Booze Each Day May Be Killing You, author Peter Flax expresses how detrimental even a small intake of alcohol daily can be to a person’s …show more content…
2). Alcohol is known to cause insomnia, anxiety and also depression, (Whitney & Rady-Rolfes, 2016, p. 231). Alcohol is a depressant and thus would cause alterations in a person’s mentality and sleep patterns as experienced by the author. Flax also noted that he felt the emotional weight of regret, (Flax, 2016, p. 2). Here the text and article are again in agreement. As Flax shows, there is a stigma attached to alcoholism that may cause some people to be reluctant to seek assistance. He goes on to state that treatment is now moving toward moderation instead of abstinence, (Flax, 2016, p. 2). The term moderation as it concerns alcohol, means up to one drink a day for women and two for men. However, the textbook authors bring up an important question; how much is “a drink”? (Whitney & Rady-Rolfes, 2016, p. 223). Thus the amount each person can drink is individual.
Point 4. Alcohol causes impaired judgement and relaxed inhibitions. Flax observed that he woke up in his child’s bed, wine spilled all over himself, his computer and his child’s blanket. He admits that he was getting home later from work and having to squeeze his drinking into less time than before, (Flax, 2016, p. 5). As drinking inhibits judgement, a person would engage in behavior like drinking in his child’s bed, that would not normally occur. Alcohol impairs judgement, exaggerates
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He began to normalize situations the he felt were not normal, (Flax, 2016, p. 4). The textbook clearly states that alcoholism interferes with work, home and school life by impairing ability, (Whitney & Rady-Rolfes, 2016, p. 230). Flax admits that he was still able to earn work promotions, help his children with homework and ride his bicycle. However, he became aware that bleeding gums and waking at 2 a.m. are not normal situations. Yet he had been considering that normal, (Flax, 2016, p. 4). His ability to function normally was becoming impaired yet he had been normalizing his problems instead of dealing with
People can easily excuse their disputes, violence or sexual offenses simply by saying “I was drunk and didn’t know what happened” and “I lost control of myself.” At the same time, the society will easily accept their excuses because people do expect and believe that drinkers shed their inhibitions under the biological effects of ethanol. But in fact, alcohol’s behavioral effect is more of a cultural influence, and people can totally be in control of themselves even if they are drunk. In Gladwell’s essay, he provides examples of the Camba ethnic group and Italian Americans who are both in integrated drinking cultures and have the habit of drinking heavily, but can control themselves and do not usually have trouble with alcoholism after consuming alcohol because their cultures believe they can. Gladwell also demonstrates the alcohol myopia theory and the related experiment overview to prove that in ambivalent cultures, people who are heavily drunk can remain in complete control of themselves and make rational decisions if they are given proper incentives. “I was drunk and I lost my control” is never a valid excuse for behavioral problems from alcohol; to solve the alcoholism problem, our culture should change its belief of alcohol’s behavioral
Our case study begins with a story of a young woman, Karen, in high school. She drinks to make herself more outgoing, performing to make more friends. She drank often during that time with friends. Later in life, adulthood revolved around drinking with her husband and friends. Alcohol continued to be a personality enhancement making it easier to party with friends and even clients or customers. It was not uncommon to drink on the job since her drinking gave her the confidence to engage with customers or clients. In her opinion, life was great. That is until her boss noticed a potential problem and confronted her about it.
“When Dad went crazy, we all had our own ways of shutting down and closing off…” (Walls 115).In Jeannette Walls memoir, The Glass Castle, Walls enlightens the reader on what it’s like to grow up with a parent who is dependent on alcohol, Rex Walls, Jeannette’s father, was an alcoholic. Psychologically, having a parent who abuses alcohol is the worst thing for a child. The psychological state of these children can get of poorer quality as they grow up. Leaving the child with psychiatric disorders in the future and or being an alcoholic as well.
on alcohol as an adult. The idea of emotional retardation caused by childhood experiences is not
“Beyond Hangovers: Understanding Alcohol's Impact Your Health.” Bethesda, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2010. Print.
From the individual perspective, the client was a victim of child abuse, which led to feelings of fear and sadness and a desire to avoid these emotions. Socially, she came from a family of alcoholics giving her easy availability. There was also the pressure of keeping up appearances due to her mother’s status in society. The initial individual consequences of the client’s alcohol use were reinforcing. She felt invincible, warm, and it helped her avoid the thoughts in her head. Everything was right with the world as long as she was intoxicated.
Using fear, while not aggressively, Silveri highlights the fact that excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading leading cause of preventable death. The author discusses this topic in a way that seems to be to scare anybody she is trying to convince. A mother reading this could worry about her daughter, or a young man in college who drinks often could take his drinking habits far more seriously after reading something like that. Also, ending the article on an optimistic note, she allows the reader to have some hope. Silveri mentions the reduction of maladaptive alcohol use through better recognition of the negative tendencies that comes with alcohol abuse in adolescents. (Adolescent Brain Development and Underage Drinking in the United States: Identifying Risks of Alcohol Use in College
Today, one out of every thirteen adults abuse alcohol or are alcoholics. That means nearly thirteen million Americans have a drinking problem. (www.niaaa.nih.gov) This topic offers a broad range of ideas to be researched within the psychological field. For this particular project, the topic of alcoholism and the psychological effects on people best fit the criteria. Alcoholism is defined as a disorder characterized by the excessive consumption of and dependence on alcoholic beverages, leading to physical and psychological harm and impaired social and vocational functioning. (www.dictionary.com) Through this project, the most important information regarding personal experiences dealing with alcoholism will be revealed. Not only are statistics, like the facts mentioned before, important when dealing with an issue such as alcoholism, but personal accounts and information are often more powerful and influential evidence. Non-alcoholics should be allowed to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for research purposes.
The three basic nutritional components found in food--carbohydrates, proteins, and fats--are used as energy after being converted to simpler products. Some alcoholics ingest as much as 50 percent of their total daily calories from alcohol, often neglecting important foods. Even when food intake is adequate, alcohol can damage the mechanisms by which the body controls blood glucose levels, resulting in either increased or decreased blood glucose (glucose is the body's principal sugar. As a result, alcohol causes the brain and other body tissue to be deprived of glucose needed for energy and function. Although alcohol is an energy source, how the body processes and uses the energy from alcohol is more complex than can be explained by a simple calorie conversion value. For example, alcohol provides an average of 20 percent of the calories in the diet of the upper third of drinking Americans, and we might expect many drinkers who consume such amounts to be obese. Instead, national data indicate that, despite higher caloric intake, drinkers are no more obese than nondrinkers. Also, when alcohol is substituted for carbohydrates, calorie for calorie, subjects tend to lose weight, indicating that they derive less energy from alcohol than from food
“When I was 13, my dad started drinking more and more. Every day he would come home from work and have beer, lots of it. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then he started getting more angry and violent. He would shout at my mom and me. It was like my father had gone and been replaced with another guy” says an anonymous kid who lives with an alcoholic parent in “How my dad’s drinking problem almost destroyed my family”. The kid depicts that he is so confused, angry and upset especially when his father got fired for going to work drunk. This is one of many children’s voices who suffers having an alcoholic in their family. Most of them are depressed because alcohol has destroyed their family. This is an addiction that does
I was so drunk last night that I cheated on my girlfriend, but I don’t remember it, so does it count? People instinctively try to place blame on anything but themselves, and alcohol presents itself as the perfect escape route for a guilty conscience. People often find themselves making impulsive decisions more frequently while under the influence of alcohol. However, how much poor behavior can alcohol excuse before a person must accept the consequences for their own actions? Tennessee Williams delves into the theme of alcohol dependence throughout his play, A Streetcar Named Desire. Throughout the play, both Blanche and Stanley seem to rely heavily upon liquor. Alcohol is used as both a crutch and an excuse for poor behavior in A Streetcar Named Desire, and has become even more prevalent in today’s society.
There are many times where the narrator describes his actions towards his loved ones while under the influence of alcohol. Since the narrator is trying to draw the attention to his consumption of alcohol, he tries to make sure that his actions trace back to it. In the short story, the narrator says "But my disease grew upon me -- for what disease is like Alcohol !..."(Poe 23) which shows his addiction for alcohol becoming stronger. The narrator's madness seems to be heightened by the alcohol. He begins to chan...
Research shows that 17.6 million people are suffering from alcohol abuse. According to the article “Facts about Alcohol”, it states that 88,000 people has died from excessive alcohol use and that alcoholism is the 3rd leading lifestyle related cause of death in the nation. Many people can debate on what excessive drinking truly is. Some may say having two to three drinks on a daily bases is excessive and then you have people that argue and say having a drink every day is excessive. Doctors and phycologist often say that excessive drinking goes to the purpose of why the person is drinking and often ask is the drink a want or a need. If the person answers as if they need the drink or drinks then they would classify those individual’s as excessive drinkers and that they are experiencing substance
Zelman, K. (1995, Dec). Retrieved from The Alcohol Debate: Should You or Shouldn't You: www.medicine.net
"Because time and amount of drinking are uncontrollable, the alcoholics is likely to engage in such behaviors as [1] breaking family commitments, both major and minor; [2] spending more money than planned; [3] drinking while intoxicated and getting arrested; [4] making inappropriate remarks to friends, family, and co-workers; [5] arguing, fighting and other anti-social actions. The alcoholic would probably neither do such things, nor approve of them in others unless he was drinking" (Johnson 203).