Alcoholism

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Alcoholism

Alcohol Dependence is a disease characterized by: a strong need or compulsion to drink, the frequent inability to stop drinking once a person has begun, the occurrence of withdrawal symptoms (nausea, sweating, shakiness) when alcohol use is stopped after a period of heavy drinking, and the need for increasing amounts of alcohol in order to feel an affect. Most experts agree that alcoholism is a disease just as high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis are diseases. Like these other diseases, alcoholism tends to run in the family. Drinking alcohol is not the only factor that leads to alcoholism, it is a chronic disease that leaves an everlasting effect on the person's life and his family.

The basic difference between the social drinker and the alcoholic is the way he drinks and the effect alcohol has on him. How much a person consumes is not the determining factor. An alcoholic might not have drink for a month, but when he does, he cannot stop. A social drinker could have a drink a number of times per week. That does not make him alcoholic. A problem drinker drinks to escape from unpleasant realities whereas the social drinker drinks to complement an event. The alcoholic becomes both physically and psychologically addicted to alcohol. The social drinker does not. Therefore, I have been researching to gather the facts that distinguish a social drinkers and an alcoholic and what divides people into these two categories. In other words, why do people belonging to these two categories have different effects on them? Alcoholism

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is a disease and that is why alcohol has different effects o...

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Hanna, Eleanor & Grant, Bridget. Alcoholism. Clinical and Experimental Research

1999: p513-22.

Lieb, J. & Young, P. TREATMENT OF ALCOHOLISM AS A CHRONIC

DISORDER. EXS 1994: 349-59

Martin, Don & Martin, Betty. The Ultimate Wine Book. California: Pine Cone Press, 1993.

Miller, K. A Case-Specific Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism. Journal of

Substance Abuse Treatment 1994: 35-44.

Niemela, O. Oral Nalmefence HCL for Alcohol Dependence. Alcoholism, Clinical &

Experimental Research 2006: 1162-7.

Parker, Frederick. A Comparison of the Sex Temperament of Alcoholics and

Moderate Drinkers. American Sociological Review, Vol. 24 January,

1959: 366-374.

Ries, Janet. Public Acceptance of the Disease Concept of Alcoholism. Journal of

Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 18, No. 3 Sep., 1977: 338-344.

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