Alcoholism

Did she often drink alone? Check. Did she often have several drinks in quick succession? Check. Did she often use alcohol as an escape from her troubles?

DEAR DR. WOLKOFF:

I am a 43-year-old alcoholic man. I drank every day for 24 years. Toward the end, my eyes were always yellow and my hands shook. I had to quit my job.

My parents and one brother are alcoholics, too, and two of my mother's three brothers died from complications of alcoholism.

I was brought up in an environment of poverty and fear in which my father would beat up my mother. Somehow, though, I finished university and received my teaching certificate.

Scientists edge toward finding genes linked to alcoholism

BY PAT RICH

The closer science comes to unravelling the genetic aspects of alcoholism, the more emphasis is being placed on the importance of environmental factors and individuals' ability to avoid their genetic destiny.

That was one of the main messages from a session on the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) at the American Society of Addiction Medicine annual meeting in San Diego this April. COGA was launched seven years ago by the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

Three treatments for alcoholism equally effective, researchers say

A groundbreaking study of alcoholism treatment has reached the surprising conclusion that all three leading behavioral approaches work equally well for a wide variety of patients, regardless of sex, psychological condition, motivation or the extent of their drinking problem.

The findings undermine long-held beliefs about alcoholism. Treatment professionals have long thought that each of the three therapies was most effective on patients who showed certain traits.

IT COULD happen to anybody, really. Go out for a meal with the wife, have a few too many, she starts to nag, and before you know what's happened, she's lying on the floor covered in bruises. For most, this sort of tiff remains private; but for Paul Gascoigne, one of England's star footballers as well as a well-known drinker and self-confessed wife-beater, the photographers were there last week to record his wife Sheryl's beaten face, and there were cries of outrage when Mr Gascoigne was subsequently selected for the England squad.