With alcoholism, most have cause and effect backwards
Three seemingly disparate statements in recent news reports have one thing in common: reporters have it backwards.
“Aggressive or withdrawn youths”and those who struggle in school”are more likely to abuse drugs.”– Marnell Jameson, “Anti-drug overdose?”The Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2006.
“Key to understanding the relationship between early drinking and alcoholism risk is whether…early drinking reflects an underlying predisposition for risky behavior in [certain] young people.”–National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism news release, “Early Drinking Linked to Higher Lifetime Alcoholism Risk,”July 17, 2006.
“On the heels of a five-year boom in weight-loss surgeries, researchers are observing an unusual phenomenon: Some patients stop overeating”but wind up acquiring new compulsive disorders such as alcoholism, gambling addiction or compulsive shopping.”– Jane Spencer, “The New Science of Addiction,”The Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2006.
The trouble with these statements is that correlation is not causation. There are other explanations for the observations other than those that are implied (aggressiveness leads to alcoholism; if we can reduce risky behavior in young people, we might prevent early drinking; alcoholism is a replacement for food addiction).
Youths who create problems for others, kids who themselves have problems and young people who engage in unnecessarily risky behaviors are frequently from broken homes or have an abusive parent. Broken homes are often a result of alcoholism in at least one parent and abuse is almost always rooted in alcoholism. Children of alcoholics are four times more likely to inherit alcoholism than children of non-addicts. Addiction can cause aggressiveness, withdrawal, lousy grades and risky misbehaviors.
Compulsions are often responses to and compensation for abuse, including psychological abandonment, by an alcoholic parent. Many compulsive eaters, gamblers and spenders are themselves addicts. But why would compulsive eaters suddenly trigger addiction after they lose weight? Maybe because triggering addiction becomes far easier after losing weight.
Consider the possibility that a certain Blood Alcohol Level must be reached to trigger addiction. There’s probably not enough of a “buzz”and feeling of godliness to trigger addiction at a .02 per cent. This could be true at BALs up to .06 and perhaps .08 per cent or even higher, depending on the addict’s particular brain chemistry. This could explain why only about half of alcoholics report that addiction was triggered during the first drinking “episode,”any definition of which is imprecise.
Recall that each drink (5 ounces wine, 1.5 ounces 80-proof liquor or 12 ounces beer) increases the BAL of a 120-pound and 200-pound person by .03 and .02 respectively. Approximately .015 per cent (a half drink for a 120-pounder and three-quarters of a drink for someone weighing 200 pounds) is assimilated each hour regardless of other factors. Four drinks over the course of two hours are needed to bring the BAL to .09 per cent for a 120-pound person, which is probably enough to trigger addiction in most who are so predisposed. However, a 200-pounder’s BAL will get to only .06 per cent. I have been unable to confirm the numbers, but we might guess that a 300-pound person’s BAL increases at .01 or .015 per cent per drink. Four drinks over the course of two hours might result in a BAL of .03 per cent for this person, probably not enough to trigger addiction.
For many, obesity begins during childhood. How many might have had several drinks on a number of occasions, only to feel a slight buzz at most? Perhaps some, used to having several drinks, continued at this rate as weight was shed.
The subject of Spencer’s article, Patty Worrells, was never a heavy drinker before her surgery at age 48. Eighteen months later and 134 pounds lighter, she was downing 15 to 20 shots of tequila almost every night. Her father was an alcoholic who died at age 54 and her younger sister struggled with addiction for her entire life. We might hypothesize that Ms. Worrells, from a family with at least two very close addicts, may have finally triggered addiction at age 48 because only then was she able to. Those who became compulsive in other ways may be untreated children of alcoholics, reacting to psychological abandonment in any way they are able.