Many Causes of Alcoholism

The Many Causes of Alcoholism

Every story has two sides to it. Alcoholism is very complicated story in the “nature vs. nurture” debate. Alcoholism is uncontrollable and everybody has a different perception of what it is. A persons understanding of what alcoholism actually is can determine whether they think alcoholism is nature or nurture. From my own understanding, I think that alcoholism has multiple causes.

Many people may think that alcoholics are people who drink often or drink everyday, but in reality, alcoholism is when people can not control their drinking. There are also different types of alcoholism. For instance, some alcohol abusers may drink everyday because they think it makes them feel better and they use it to deal with everyday problems. By contrast, periodic alcoholics are those that can be sober for long periods of time and then are tempted by alcohol. Once this temptation sets in they do not know how to stop themselves from drinking. They do not know when to stop drinking.

Although many people may not consider alcohol a drug, in many ways it is. Alcoholics, like many other drug addicts, can build a tolerance to the drug. This means that it takes increasingly greater amounts of the drug to create the same feelings of euphoria. Alcoholics can become physically and psychologically dependent. Alcoholism is a terminal disease. “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” Alcoholism is not something that goes away or that a person can just get rid of. An alcoholic may be able to “sober up” or “clean up” but will always be tempted by alcohol. The only way for an alcoholic to be “better” is to refrain from alcohol altogether.

It is a known fact that many people who become alcoholics have family members who are also alcoholics. If a person has parents or ancestors that were alcoholics, he/she is more likely to become an alcoholic than a person who doesn’t have alcoholism in his/her family. “An offspring of one alcoholic parent is seven to eight times more likely to become an alcoholic than is a peer without an alcoholic parent” (Springhouse 285).

Alcoholism could be described as a recessive trait. Scientists are looking to find whether or not there is some type of an alcoholic gene that causes some people to be alcoholics. For example, a couple has three children. Two of the children are brunettes, but the other is a blonde. This is because the blonde haired child has a recessive gene. It is possible that alcoholism works the same way. Suppose there was a family with five children. Four of those five children had no problem with alcohol and could drink it responsibly; however, the fifth child was an alcoholic. The fifth child could have been born with a recessive gene that caused them to be an alcoholic.

Another reason I think alcoholism is something some people are born with is because of the fact that there are different types of alcoholics. Some drink everyday, whereas others can stay sober for long periods of time, and then just go on a drinking binge for no reason. If alcoholism was just because of how some people were raised, wouldn’t there only be one type of alcoholic?

Alcoholism can also be caused by people’s environment and social life. Many people were raised in a happy environment and were never really exposed to alcohol while growing up. Then, later in life they are exposed to alcohol and become alcoholics. This proves that it must be something natural to that person because they were raised in an environment free of alcohol where they never needed it to be happy. Once exposed to it, they became alcoholics because it was just something that they were born with.

As I said before, alcoholism is a terminal disease because people can not get rid of it. Sure, people may be able to overcome their alcoholism, but since they can not control their drinking, alcoholics must stay away from tempting situations. Some people are raised in a poor environment, and that can cause them to turn to alcohol to deal with their problems. They may move themselves to a better environment, but they are still alcoholics. This shows that even after being in a better, well “nurturing” environment, they were still alcoholics because alcoholism wasn’t something that they learned from their past environment. Alcoholism was just something that was natural to them.

On the other hand, many people think that alcoholism is a learned habit. This can be explained simply by the quote, “Monkey