Victims of Alcoholism

Alcoholism is one of the most serious disease in the contemporary world. Currently, nearly 14 million Americans - 1 in every 13 adults - abuse alcohol or are alcoholic. I t can cause brain damage and increase the risk for cancers, especially those of liver, esophagus or throat. Many people claim that alcoholism is a problem of poor, homeless and unemployment people who prefer to drink rather to find a new job. However, many well educated and rich Americans also have serious problems with alcohol.


Recent research from National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has demonstrated that for many people problems connected with drinking are inherited. It proves that this disease might be caused by transferring patterns of behaviors from family or people in our environment. Children from families with alcoholic problems start to drink more frequent than other kids. There is a lot of cases where the whole family becomes the alcoholic. It is connected with genes. Alcoholism tends to run in families, and genetic factors partially explain this pattern. We can inherited father’s eyes as well as alcoholic problems.

The stereotypes say that children who drink alcohol usually have unemployed and poor parents who find a medicine for their problems in alcohol, they don’t care about them and very often leave them alone at home. Everyday we can hear on TV or in the radio stories about kids left without supervision who were drinking alcohol somewhere at the playground or in the basement while their parents were doing exactly the same thing at home. This problem appears also in wealthy families. For example celebrities have fame and money but very often they can’t find happiness around all these people who are pretending to be their friends. Then they are trying to solve their problems by drinking. They don’t have enough love for their kids, they think that money is what they need in such a young age and that’s the only thing they give them.

People who suffer from depression often become alcoholics. It is because they are either unable to do anything themselves or are not able to share their problems with others. It again might happen to somebody who is unemployed and to somebody who has much money. In the 21st Century, it is predicted that stress and stress related illnesses such as depression will become the biggest killers. Depression leads to alcohol almost in every case. If you ask any alcoholics why they drink, you will probably get the answer that they drink to forget. This misbelieve is very frequent among people who suffer from the alcohol abuse. They drink to relax and to feel happy but in fact it leads them to even more serious depression. The contemporary world brings many stressful and difficult situations for everybody from the homeless man living on the train station to the wealthy businessman working for some important computer company.

We should be very careful observers and be always ready to give help to somebody who suffers from alcoholic abuse. The support from relatives and friends can help to cure this disease. In our observations we must be always objective. Alcoholism can attack any person from our society irrespective of social class.