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To understand the phenomenon of alcoholism, we will need to look at the chemical and drug; its physical and psychological effects; the people who drink it; and the families, societies, and cultures those people live in. This book begins with an examination of the chemical and drug, with alcohol itself.
Cross-addiction is increasingly common, and the counselor must deal with the client’s total drug involvement. To do so effectively, it is necessary to know what those drugs are, how they work, and what they do.
Although the mechanisms by which alcohol destroys cells and damages organs are multiple, complex, and only partly understood, it is believed that alcohol’s ability to penetrate membranes and disrupt membrane phenomena leads to cell death and is one of the most important pathways to somatic damage secondary to alcohol abuse.
Almost every culture has discovered the use of beverage alcohol. Since any sweet fluid will soon ferment when exposed to the yeast spores omnipresent in the air, spontaneous fermentation must have been a common occurrence. One might say that prehistoric peoples discovered alcohol early and often. Apparently, when they tasted the beers and wines produced by serendipity, they liked them. At any rate what was once produced by accident was soon produced intentionally, and the production of alcoholic beverages became one of humanity’s earliest technological achievements.
View of alcohol abuse as emergent from the interaction of four factors: the pharmacology of alcohol, genetic predisposition, environment, and psychodynamics.Alcohol abuse is best conceptualized as a biopsychosocial disorder. Patients presenting with alcohol problems demonstrate considerable commonality, and even if that commonality is the product of their drinking rather than its cause, the clinician must deal with it. (68 pp.)