I Want For Free Myself From This Disease

Alcoholism is one of the most intractable and pervasive psychological disorders known. Though the negative health consequences of alcohol are widely understood, and, if anything, the social consequences of alcoholism are even more widely acknowledged, it seems that no matter what steps are taken by public health officials or private organizations, no strategy can ever be fully developed for eradicating alcoholism. There are a number of reasons why this is true. This paper will explore some of the social and medical problems created by alcohol, but in it I will also consider the role of alcohol in my personal life and the way I have seen the disease play out in the lives of people around me. The paper will also examine the social and political responses to the problem of alcoholism and attempt to determine where productive approaches have been taken and areas where mistakes have been made. Before discussing such wide-ranging questions, it is important to understand what alcoholism is and how it is manifested.

In the beginning of the Prohibition Era, the supporters of the alcohol ban were met with a pleasing decline in arrest for drunkenness, hospitalizations related to alcohol and the fall of liver related medical problems that were caused by the consumption of alcohol. These statistics seemed to support the tireless campaigning done to prohibit alcohol. This decline in alcohol

Drinking heavily and binge drinking leads to short-term as well as long-term health consequences in males and females. Both women and men can suffer the short-term

One of the biggest problems that came about because of Prohibition was the rise in alcohol related crimes. This was simply because people weren’t willing to give up old habits. “Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and make crimes out of things that are not crimes.” (Abraham Lincoln, 1840). Since every person who took a sip of an alcoholic

According to the Dual Diagnosis website, “In 2012, as many as 87.6 percent of American adults over age 18 were reported in a SAHMSA…study to have consumed alcohol at some point in their lives…The National Institutes of Health…estimated that 17 million adults in the United States in 2012 had an alcohol use disorder” (“Disease…”). Approximately one in every 12 people either are abusing alcohol, or they are becoming, if not are, victims of alcoholism (National…). Alcohol consumption is especially known in our society’s culture. There are numerous people who like to drink every now and again in moderation; however, there are far too many people who abuse the alcohol and may even be completely dependent on it. Several

It is no secret that studies throughout the years have proven that substance addiction is more common in men than it is in women. In a majority of the studies done, medical professionals have been able to prove that males start using drugs from a younger age, go on longer usage spurts more often, are more likely to abuse tobacco products and alcohol, and are more likely to engage in binge drinking, where they consume five or more drinks in a short period of time (The Recovery Village, “A Study of Drug Addiction Between the Genders”). Up until the 1980’s only men were setting the standards for addiction treatment. Though both men and women were studied, the studies were done from a male perspective. This same perspective was the one that set the precedence for drug abuse prevention programs and for the rehab facilities. The treatment modalities were ones that tended to be designed with an emphasis on the needs of the male clientele with the female clientele being pushed through a one size fits all style treatment. This however, started to change in the 1980’s after the second wave of the women’s rights movement occurred. Women began to question

Prohibition during the 1920’s and the 1930’s was the banning of the production and selling of alcohol throughout America. The Prohibition era was one of the most controversial periods in the United States History due to its outcomes it lay behind. Factors that lead to congress toward an Alcohol-free law came with the United States entry into World War 1. Legislators feared that the military personnel health and actions were at risk

Based on the results of Swedish adoption studies, some researchers divide alcoholism into two types. Type I, the most common, occurs in both men and women and is associated with adult-onset alcohol dependence. This form, also known as "milieu-limited" alcoholism, appears to be the result of "genetic predisposition and environmental provocation," according to NIAAA's 1991 publication Alcohol Research: Promise for the Decade--that is, the development of alcoholism in these cases is an interaction between inherited predisposition and the person's life situations.

The purpose of this report is to focus on the comparison of alcohol consumption for male/ female students studying the General and Applied Psychology with the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, past or present. This experiment compares male/ female drinking habits and consumption for the last 12 months. It is hypothesised that male and female patterns of alcohol consumption are different, as past studies have shown that males consume alcohol than females (XXXXXX).

Increasingly, evidence from over the past years has shown a genetic susceptibility to alcoholism. Though no certain evidence has been proven amongst the Indigenous population but it is believed that specific groups are not more susceptible to alcoholism, but within the group a proportion could be. Social influences also play a major role in the alcohol abuse amongst the aboriginal communities. The conditions of the typical Indigenous’ lifestyle, including low employment and a lack of education often causes significant social stress. This stress can easily lead to excessive alcohol consumption.

Previously, it was the case that men were much more likely to abuse alcohol, as they were much higher consumers. However, in the past few decades, alcohol consumption by women in the UK and other countries has increased greatly. Although it has stabilised over the last few years in the UK, most women who use alcohol drink more than the recommended limit. This is especially the case in teenage girls with the likelihood of binge drinking as high as teenage boys. Women in professional jobs are another group that has seen large rises in alcohol consumption (Institute of Alcohol Studies, 2013). And, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (2015) around five million women in the United States are threatening their health by drinking dangerously high levels of alcohol.

Alcohol dependence has a much more pronounced medical effect on women than on men. Medical problems

Along with gender differences, other factors that influence the addiction of alcohol amongst women include genetics, neuropsychology, and environment. The environmental factor plays a big role in alcohol addiction amongst women, especially in the family context. Holdcraft and Iacono wrote in an article, “Women have been found to have more drinking-related familial consequences while men suffer more adverse social, occupational, legal and violence-related consequences” (pp. 1026). Women of alcohol addiction have developed this disease more than not through some type of influence by family.

Alcoholism is currently reputed to be "one of the major health and social problems of our

Alcoholism has been a major problem in society for a number of years. In fact, alcoholism should be compared to a virus. This is because a person can never be completely cured from alcoholism; they can only fight the battle, day to day, hoping not to relapse. When it comes to the etiologies, or causes, of alcoholism, there seems to be three distinct origins of alcoholism. These causes are genetic factors, dependency caused by brain chemical imbalances after long-term use, and social and emotional factors.