The etiology and development of chronic alcolism is more complicated than that of many other diseases. The condition also includes the many complications that may evolve from a large and continuing dependence on alcohol. The condition may be difficult to identify and alcoholics are not always dignosed correctly.
The official declaration from the WHO defines an alcoholic as someone who drinks more than 14 drinks a week (women) or 21 drinks a week (men). The definition is based on statistics and is somewhat arbitrary, as alcohol related damages are sometimes seen with smaller weekly consumptions. Therefore, an additional list of symptoms is also used as a guideline to determine whether or not someone qualifies as being an alcoholic. The symptoms are:
- A strong craving for alcohol.
- Reduced control of one's alcohol consumption.
- The presence of withdraval symptoms in response to abstinence from alcohol.
- An ability to consume increasingly larger doses of alcohol.
- Giving a high priority to drinking in everyday life.
- Keeping up drinking in spite of physical-, psychological-, and social side-effects.
A person qualifies as being alcohol dependent if more than 3 of these symptoms are present over a period of one month or in several shorter periods during the year.
In spite of all these guidelines, the best definition of an alcoholic may very well be the biological one, namely that an alcoholic is someone who both when he or she drinks and when not has a persistant biochemical problem; the most characteristic symptom to this being that the level of glucose in the blood falls dramatically with severe consequences to the energy supply to the internal organs, including the brain. This can trigger a biological energy crisis which will result in different symptoms, depending on which organ is the first to be struck by this shut-down in energy supply. This will cause an alcoholic to reach in desperation for anything that may restore the energy supply, most often sugar or alcohol.
The problem with using sugar and alcohol as a "first aid" to a chemical energy crisis is that even though one will experience an almost immediate sense of relief, the long-term consequences of doing this as a habit are quite damaging. The alcoholic will degrade sugar and alcohol into toxic compounds which will gradually destroy key biologic functions in the organism. Also see "Low blood sugar".
THIQ
In the brain of alcoholics, the break-down product acetaldehyde is transformed into the habit-forming compound THIQ (tetrahydroisoquinoline). Contrary to non-alcoholics, alcoholics accumulate large amounts of THIQ in their brains, and as THIQ has the same habit-forming abilities as heroin, it is of utmost significance that alcoholics abstain from alcohol altogether.
So-called dipsomaniacs may have long periods of time with total abstinence from alcohol followed by short periods of intense drinking.
Alcoholism takes 10-12 years off of the average human life. Alcoholics almost always experience decreased happiness with their everyday life and have a weak constitution in practically every way.
Physical-, psychological-, and social complications to chronic alcoholism.
Alcoholism often leeds to physical-, psychological-, and social deroute. Early signs of this happening are depression, insomnia, irritability, and restlessness. In the progress of the disease even more deleterious cognital complications may follow. Typical examples are: serious mental illness, amnesia, dilirium tremens, and dementia. These are often seen together with - or precursed by - the following complications: vitamin deficiencies, neuritis, fat-liver and cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, depression, gallstones, indigestion, diabetes, gastric ulcers, oesophageal varices, diarrhea, progressive myasthenia (weakening of the muscles), cardiac diseases, impotence, and mental illness.
