Almost all had sexual problems. Whatever the
causative factors of alcoholism may turn out to be, one thing is clear from a
practical preventive standpoint: without excessive consumption of alcohol there
cannot be alcoholism. Perseverance at drinking heavy drinking is required to
establish the addiction.
Alcoholism is no sudden visitation. The person who
becomes alcoholic builds up to it, and often does so quite gradually, unaware
that he really is beginning to drink to excess and then that he is drinking
more and more to excess. Significantly, there have been surveys of highly
intelligent, heavy- drinking business executives to determine what they
consider excessive drinking-and always, it appears, the definition of excessive
drinking turns out to be several drinks more than the heavy drinker personally
consumes.
Some of
these men have indicated that they see nothing excessive in drinking as much as
a fifth of whiskey a day. Unless they have specific guidelines to follow, it
would appear that even intelligent people who have moved far along the road to
alcoholism may not recognize the fact. In an effort to provide such guidelines,
the Life Extension Foundation in New York, a nonprofit organization de- voted
to improving the health of business executives through preventive measures, has
produced the following for its executive clients which deserve repeating here.
Any drinker, the Foundation suggests, can con-sider that alcoholism is
approaching:
1. If two or three years ago a half hour
before dinner was set aside for a drink and now this has stretched to two hours
and four drinks.
2. If two or three years ago dinner was
anticipated with pleasure and now there is little interest in food and
sometimes dinner is completely omitted.
3. If
two or three years ago cocktails at lunch were for business entertaining only
and now one or two are routine.
4. If two or three years ago weekend
consumption was little more than that of weekdays but now drinking is started
in the morning and continues more or less all day.
