--- Craig Coonrad <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, gts wrote:
>
> If someone can explain this as something other than
> natural selection at
> work have at it.

I disagree, but I can't give a simple answer to this.
I would say just that alcoholism is a very complicated
phenomenon, and it's not as simple as tolerant to
alcohol = low alcoholism, weak against alcohol = high
alcoholism. For example, the rate of alcoholism among
men is higher than among women in every culture. This
is clearly not because men are less tolerant of
alcohol than women. In fact it's the opposite. Then
why are there more male alcoholics? It's probably
fairly self-evident, that drinking alcohol is more
culturally allowable to men than it is to women.
Especially getting drunk. Also, there's an interesting
statistic that many illnesses such as anxiety
disorders and chronic fatigue syndrome are more
prevalent among women than among men. There is
suspicion, however, the perhaps the prevalence really
*isn't* higher. What's higher is the diagnosed
prevalence. In other words, men are "self-medicating"
with alcohol instead of going to a doctor. There are
also cultures, for instance Japan, where men are sort
of encouraged socially to become drunk (kind of like
at fraternity parties in the US).

Another perspective is, people often say that the rate
of alcoholism is high among native Americans because
of the loss of culture or power if you want.

> I would classify alcohol addiction as just another
> Syndrome X disorder or
> "disease of civilization".

It's an interesting analogy but it's not really a
great one because metabolic syndrome X conditions,
i.e. hypertension, type 2 diabetes and coronary heart
disease essentially form a sort of category, where
they may all be manifestations of an identical
process, which actually is related to the ordinary
modern high-carbohydrate diet. Insulin resistance and
mineral imbalance. So alcoholism doesn't really fit
into that category.
>
> Some people lack
> a certain biochemical
> reaction in their body that says "stop that's enough
> alcohol for now".
>
As I alluded to above, I think there may be
biochemical reactions involved but there are also
social factors that can't be overlooked. I used to
have a hard time saying stop but am much better now,
probably because of wisdom that comes with age.



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