Alcoholism -Perils and precautions to take - How to come out alcoholism?

Alcoholic Drinking

THIS IS not a Prohibition treatise. If you drink alcoholic beverages-and it is certainly possible to do so intelligently and, in our opinion, rewardingly-it is important from the standpoint of preventive medicine to understand certain facts.

Drinking can begin moderately and remain moderate, and all will be well. But the number of people who fall into the trap of excessive drinking, who end up as alcoholics with a disease serious in it and serious because of other grave health problems it can trigger, has been increasing. Alcoholism ranks today as the fourth most important health problem in the United States, afflicting between 5 and 6 million persons, and exceeded in importance only by heart disease, mental illness, and cancer. One of every 13 adult males over 20 years of age is an alcoholic.

There are many women alcoholics-an unknown number because they come less to medical and public attention. Only 3 percent of the total alcoholic population is on a Skid Row. Alcoholics are to be found in every walk of life, in all occupations, races, and social strata. Drunkenness is only the most obvious manifestation of alcoholism. A slow, insidious, malignant disorder, alcoholism is a major cause of death in the 35 to 65 age group. The life expectancy of alcoholics is 10 to 12 years less than that of others.

Common causes of death include liver and heart failure, gastrointestinal hemorrhage, accident, suicide, and acute intoxication itself. Many if not most heavy drinkers are poorly nourished. One reason is that alcohol may dull the appetite so that food is forgotten after several drinks. In addition, alcohol can irritate the stomach lining, and the resulting pain may make the thought of eating repulsive. 

Drinking heavily and failing to eat properly, the alcoholic suffers malnutrition though taking in several thousand calories daily (each fluid ounce of alcohol has an Drinking energy content of 150 calories-"empty" calories which provide no sustenance for body tissues).

Delirium tremens may follow an excessive siege of drinking. This can be a temporary disorder, lasting several hours to a week, during which the victim talks incoherently and usually has visual and aural hallucinations, sleeps with difficulty, experiences nightmares. But for a person already seriously weakened by malnutrition, the DT's can be fatal. Chronic alcoholics are about eight times as likely to fall victim to cirrhosis of the liver as other people. 

The liver degenerates, sometimes so seriously that function ceases completely and the victim dies. Excessive drinking can have nervous system effects, producing painful nerve inflammation as well as impairing memory and intellectual powers. Resistance to infection is impaired, so that lobar pneumonia, for example, is more often fatal among drinkers than among nondrinkers.

Alcoholic psychosis-serious mental disturbance-constitutes about 5 percent of all mental illness. Unhappily, too, alcoholism affects not only the victim but Spouse and children as well, often leading to emotional or psychosomatic illnesses among the latter.