Alcohol Abuse Research Paper

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
RESEARCH PAPER
SUBMITTED TO PROFESSOR RUSH
THEO 330 – B02
The abuse of alcohol is a problem in our society; a social disorder that causes physical and emotional injuries to people and family life. Alcohol is the oldest drug around. It is also the most widely-used and almost 50 percent of people aged 12 and over have consumed alcohol in the United States. Most people are able to consume alcohol responsibly. However, for one reason or another, some people abuse alcohol and develop addictions.
Alcohol can destroy persons who depend on its effects to solve their problems. Not only does the use of alcohol create serious health disorders for those who drink heavily during their lifetime, but also causes serious health disorders
in children whose mothers drank while pregnant. Individuals who drink alcohol are often responsible for injuring other innocent people. Each year in the United States, nearly 85,000 people die from alcohol-related causes, making it the third leading preventable cause of death in our country. (NIAAA)
Many automobile accidents involve drunk drivers.
People who drink endanger themselves and everyone around them. In addition, business and industry suffer financial loss because their employees drink. What might begin as casual drinking can become heavy drinking and alcoholism. Because the abuse of alcohol has a negative effect on men, women, and children, that same abuse on alcohol is a threat in our society.
Although society cannot force people to stop abusing alcohol, society does try to provide rehabilitation for heavy drinkers and alcoholics. People who watch television commercials and read magazine advertisements perhaps think that the use of alcohol can be a positive factor in their life. But according to the author of Alcohol: The Delightful Poison, “alcohol is classified as a drug and is recognized as a depressant that acts as an anesthetic on the central nervous system, and is a consciousness changing drug.” (Fleming
p.122) Nearly 18 million adults in the U.S. are dependent on alcohol or have other alcohol-related problems. (emedicinehealth) Those who become physically dependant on alcohol experience certain biochemical changes that take place in the brain cells that make these individuals unable to function normally. Alcohol is absorbed into the blood stream through the stomach and small intestines, and it flows through the brain where it interferes with certain functions causing staggering, lack of coordination, incoherent speech, vomiting and even unconsciousness. In addition, autopsies have shown that “the brains of chronic, excessive drinkers suffer so much cell damage that they have atrophied, especially in the frontal areas.
Pneumo-encephalograms of living alcoholics indicate that tissue in the center of the brain may also suffer from cell damage, thus, chronic drinkers act like neurological patients with verified brain damage. In addition, one Australian study states that “the brain of a heavy chronic drinker is likely to shrink in size.” (Lake p. 78) The brain is the controller of all human activity, and if because of alcohol abuse it does not function normally, then all human activity functions abnormally creating various problems.
Another health problem caused by excessive drinking is damage to the liver. “When alcohol is taken into the body ninety to ninety-eight percent is destroyed through oxidation. The remaining percentage of the alcohol is exerted through the lungs a breath, through the kidneys as urine, or in lesser amounts through other bodily functions such as tears, sweat, and bile or stomach juices. Once taken into the body, the liver oxidizes the alcohol, but even the healthiest liver can handle only a drop or two at a time. When alcohol is metabolized by the liver, it poisons the organ causing it to be loaded with fat. The French physician, Rene Laennec, first described this disorder as cirrhosis from the Greek word for tawny, Kirrhos. (Selzer p. 71) The most common cause of Cirrhosis is the consumption of alcohol. “About fifteen percent of chronic drinkers will develop cirrhosis of the liver.” (Lake p. 78)
This disease causes the liver to turn yellowish because it is fatty, hard because it is scarred and knobby because of the regeneration of liver tissue between the scars produces little mounds. The scarring of the liver is irreversible and may cause death. However, “sixty percent of all cirrhotics who stop drinking will live because the liver itself will regenerate if drinkers stop drinking.” (Selzer p. 77) One research study indicates that “excessive drinking clearly does shorten life.” (McGrady p. 206) Chronic drinking causes another serious health problem, an irreversible form of impotence. Also, chronic use of alcohol may delay sexual maturity in male adolescents, but not if female adolescents.
With alcohol as with all other drugs and medicine you take, too much of it will turn to poison. Pregnant women, who drink, poison their system and those of their unborn children. Alcohol in any form passes to the placenta so quickly that the unborn baby feels a drink almost as fast as a pregnant women. Alcoholic mothers, as well as casual drinkers, can produce babies with a pattern of birth defects known as fetal alcohol syndrome. This disorder is “the most severe form of alcohol damage to the fetus; it is the third most common birth defect with mental retardation.” (Morgan) Children born with fetal alcohol syndrome experience growth deficiency, withdrawal symptoms, heart defects, and early death. Very often society must face this problem and provide the care and treatment for the victims and at the same time try to combat excessive drinking women.
Men and women drinkers alike suffer from the negative effects of alcohol abuse, but women – the life bearers – have a special responsibility to the family. Yet, in the last twenty years the number of women who drink alcoholic beverages has increased greatly. A survey reported that “sixty-four percent of American females drank.” Statistics from Alcoholics Anonymous have provided further proof that in this country the number of women alcoholics is increasing. “In 1974, one out of three new members was a woman, and the 2004 membership survey found that “35 percent of AA members are women. That means that there are almost 700,000 women in AA around the world.” (Alcoholics Anonymous 2004) The Nation Institution an Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimates that “one out of thirty women in the United States is and active alcoholic.” (Winchester p.207)
Women’s abuse of alcohol has far-reaching effects on family life because women more than men traditionally care for children on the home. This is not to say, however, that male alcoholics do not create negative effects on family life. Alcoholism in the home can cause a “break-up” of a marriage. Studies indicate show that only one in ten husbands stay with his alcoholic wife while nine out of ten wives stay with their alcoholic husbands, thus providing some security for the children on the family.
For children, parental alcohol abuse creates an emotional scare from which some never recover: “life for them is chaotic, inconsistent and unpredictable; some children may be sent to school dressed inadequately and without breakfast. Certainly this situation has negative implications for learning and productivity in our society. In some cases, children sometimes take over the parenting role as shoppers, cooks, and even caretakers of the alcoholic mothers. “Researchers estimate that 500,000 children in the state of New York live in families with an alcoholic member.” (Alcoholism) Alcoholism in the home creates an unjustifiable burden on society’s greatest natural resource, its children.
Excessive drinking is not restricted to adult men and women. Tomorrow’s alcoholics are today’s young people. “The rate of current alcohol consumption increases with increasing age according to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 1% at age 12 to 15% at age 16, and 39% at age 20.” (FAAR) More than seventy-five percent of the teenagers in the United States drink by the time they are sixteen, and twenty-five percent drink every week.
“Nearly four in ten high school seniors report drinking some alcohol within the past month, and more than two in ten reported “binge drinking” within the past two weeks.” (HHS) “One survey has estimated that seventy-five percent of college students use alcohol and sixteen percent drink to excess.” Another has indicated that presently “one out of six college students drinks excessively and more than one out of fifty must leave school because of drinking.” (Alcoholism) As early as 1923, Dr. Harold Lorand stated that “alcohol is extremely dangerous to young people and impairs their capacity for learning and their intellect.” (Lorand) High school students who use alcohol or other substances are five times more likely to drop out of school. (MADD)
Excessive drinkers are not only parents and students but also drivers; the same drivers who are responsible for at least “fifty percent of this nations automobile fatalities.”40 Furthermore, “drunken drivers cause more deaths, injuries, and destruction than so murderers, muggers, robbers, rapists, and thieves.”41 According to the latest statistics, “drunken driving crashes represent the nation’s single greatest killer of people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four,”42 and drunk driving costs the United States $132 billion a year. (MADD)”According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) 33,561 people died in traffic crashes in 2012 in the United States (latest figures available), including an estimated 10,322 people who died in drunk driving crashes, accounting for 31% of all traffic deaths that year. “Fortunately, drunk-driving fatalities have decreased significantly since all 50 states adopted a drinking age of 21 in 1981. In fact, according to the US Department of Transportation, the number of drunk-driving related fatalities has fallen 49 percent since 1982; 10,000 fewer drunk-driving fatalities occurred in 2009 than in 1982.” (Caron)
Business suffers economic losses, also. “In 2006, alcohol problems cost the United States $224 billion each year, primarily from lost productivity but also from health care and property damage costs.” (NIAAA) According to a recent study funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “about 15 percent of U.S. workers, or 19.2 million workers, are under the influence of alcohol at least occasionally while on the job.” (OHS) Business and industry want to make a profit, and the employees who are excessive drinkers create problems that reduce business efficiency and profit. In an attempt to deal with the situation, some businesses have developed therapy programs for alcohol abusers.
“The General Motors Plant therapy program cut half the disciplinary problems, and absenteeism went down forty percent. General Motors saved thirty-seven million dollars by helping their employees.”(Winchester) The Bell Telephone Company “rehabilitated 550 of 750 problem drinkers, and the number of “good” ratings on the jobs went up 600 percent.” (Winchester) Over a period of eight years, “the Firestone Company helped 5,100 workers with their alcohol problems, and the recovery rate rose eighty percent.” (Winchester) According to some counselors who work with alcohol abusers, “alcoholism is an illness that can be arrested and the alcoholic individual can once again become a productive member of society.” (South Central) If and when this happens, alcohol will not be as great a threat in the family and society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://ohsonline.com/Articles/2007/08/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Workplace-Trends.aspx http://www.caron.org/knowledge-library/statistics-outcomes/drinking-driving-stats?WT.mc_id=GrantsPPC&gclid=CLXotfPSlL8CFQqFfgod10MAWg http://www.emedicinehealth.com/alcoholism/article_em.htm#alcoholism_overview (Accessed June 2014) http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/substance-abuse/alcohol.html (Accessed June 2014) http://responsibility.org/underage-drinking/statistics (FAAR) (Accessed June 2014) http://www.madd.org/statistics/#sthash.NLsF3FkE.dpuf (Accessed June 2014) http://dcist.com/2012/08/poll_finds_most_americans_like_to_d.php (Accessed June 2014)
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Winchester, James H., “Business’ Battle Against Booze,” Readers Digest, 119: 107-110, September 1981
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Lake, Alice “Suddenly It’s a Woman’s Problem,” Redbook, 159, (June, 1982) p. 78
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