Perspectives on Alcohol Abuse The Biological View Ingestion of alcohol is associated with numerous behavioral, biophysical, and psychological changes. After the first drink, the average person experiences a lessening of anxiety.
As more alcohol is consumed, the depressant action of alcohol effects brain functions. The individual staggers, and his or her mood becomes markedly unstable. Sensory perception is seriously impaired. Influenced by evidence that heavy drinking leads to a variety of bodily changes, writers have often characterized alcoholism itself as a disease. (ASA 1960), often referred to as the ASA study of alcoholism, believed that alcoholism is a permanent and irreversible condition and that alcoholics are essentially different from non alcoholics. Alcoholics, he contended, experience an irresistible physical craving for alcohol. Satisfaction of this craving leads to loss of control as a result of increasing physical dependence on alcohol. Alcoholic individuals feel compelled to continue drinking even after ingesting only a small amount of alcohol. Jellinek believed that the only way alcoholics can return to a normal life is through complete abstinent.
Some of Jellinek's ideas have been questioned on the basis of research findings that seem inconsistent with them. However, Jellinek's disease concept of alcoholism has succeeded in changing people's attitude toward alcoholics from one of condemnation and blame to one of concern. In addition, it has focused researcher 's attention on the biological aspects of alcohol abuse.
Genetic Factors in Susceptibility to Alcohol Studies using animals have shown that it is possible to breed strains of mice or rats that differ in their metabolism of alcohol. Some of these strains prefer diluted all individuals alcohol solutions to water, while others avoid alcohol at all costs. It has been demonstrated many' times that alcoholism runs in human families as Sons of alcoholics are about four times more likely to be alcoholic than are sons of non-alcoholics. This is true even when children are adopted and have no exposure to their biological parents after the first few weeks of life (Goodwin, 1986; Schuckit, 2007).
Evidence for genetic predisposition to alcoholism and porn addiction is growing, and it is now widely accepted by researchers in the field that alcoholism & Porn addiction comes from the interaction of heredity and environment. Possibly characteristic brain electrical patterns have been found in subjects who are not alcoholic but are judged to be at risk of alcoholism because alcoholism exists among their first-degree relatives.
Studies of individuals who had a biological parent with alcoholism but were removed from the alcoholic environment through adoption at an early age have allowed assessment of the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors in the genesis of alcoholism. Such studies have identified two types of genetic predisposition to alcoholism, male-limited and milieu-limited (Cloninger and others, 1981 ). • Male susceptibility occurs only in males, is highly heritable, gives rise to severe early-onset alcoholism often requiring extensive treatment, and is associated with serious law breaking. • Milieu-limited susceptibility, found to occur in both sexes, IS perhaps involved in most cases of alcoholism. This type of hereditary alcoholism has a late onset, is usually not as severe as male-limited alcoholism, and is not associated with the legal system. Milieu-limited susceptibility requires environmental provocation to become expressed as alcoholism, but environmental provocation does not mean that there must be alcoholism in the adoptive parent only significant parental factor found associated with this type of alcoholism in the adoptees was low socioeconomic status of the adoptive father.
Knowledge that alcoholism has both genetic and environmental components can have important practical applications. Prevention of alcohol abuse and alcoholism would certainly be an important application of this new and growing knowledge. If reliable biological indicators of a predisposition toward alcoholism can be found, individuals who have those indicators can know the risks they face and can make informed choices about drinking.
Another practical application is improved treatment. It is already clear that alcoholism is not a single disease entity. By clarifying the nature of various subcategories of alcoholism, genetic studies can point the way to more specific and effective therapies based on the genetic uniqueness of individuals.
Genetic molecular variations in alcohol-metabolizing enzymes are a major area of research on the heredity of alcoholism because a mutation that produces a slight alteration in the molecular structure of these enzymes could be expected to have a pronounced effect on their ability to remove alcohol from the body. Many investigators believe that such studies have the potential of explaining fundamental mechanisms of alcoholism and of identifying genetic markers of susceptibility.