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Page Rebuild

For quite some time, the Alcoholism entry has provided out of date or incorrect information. I'm in the process of rewriting it to meet contemporary scientific standards for the disease. I welcome external review and discussion. 
 Stuart Gitlow MD (Chief, Annenberg Physician Training Program in Addictive Disease, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NYC)

Thanks for your contributions so far.  You may be interested in creating a user account.  Some of the benefits are discussed at this page: Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account%3F  

It greatly reduces the chances people will revert your changes, for one thing. -)  

Good points, and I've created an account as you suggest. See my notes below as well. sg

In response to the commentary at the very, very bottom of this page (dupe social impacts), I've rearranged the content of the page a bit.  I believe that it now better reflects the chronology of how people are impacted by alcoholism, and therefore reflects the order in which this information becomes important to people: definition, effects, diagnoses, treatment, broader issues.

FYI, I renamed the first instance of Social Issues to read ""Societal Issues"" and moved it into the broader issues area.  I moved the latter one up to become a subheading of the ""Effects"" category.  After this edit I'm going to go remove the original note of this (because it's no longer germain), so you'll have to look at the next edit in order to read it.  

In looking over the article and the discussion of Stanton Peele's perspective et al, I'm wondering whether some of the ongoing discussion held on this page is about a misconception that alcoholism is equal to ""excessive drinking,"" whatever that is. Alcoholism doesn't refer to someone who drinks a lot. Many people drink a great deal but aren't alcoholic. Conversely, many alcoholics don't drink very much at all compared against the general population's intake.  

The section on ""terminology"" that you removed was intended to address exactly this misunderstanding.  Since you seem to think it's important, I'm putting it back in.  

righto 

Despite the difficulties that we've had of late, the entry is coming together nicely. I'm looking over the EFFECTS section, which has a good deal of information on alcohol itself, and the impact of alcohol USE. It is difficult to tease out the effects of alcoholism versus the effects of alcohol. The effects of alcoholism when an alcoholic is in recovery, for example, would be different from the effects of alcoholism while an individual is drinking on a daily basis. (This is similar, of course, to the situation with other diseases - the effects of diabetes when an individual has well-controlled blood glucoses are different from the effects of untreated diabetes). Nevertheless, I wonder whether the entire section would be more appropriately found in the alcohol article rather than here in the alcoholism article. Can we build a consensus regarding this area?  

 Alcoholism vs. Alcohol abuse 

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism make a difference between one and the other. What I found more confusing is that from ""alcohol abuse"" you're redirected to ""alcoholism"".

""Alcoholism, also known as 'alcohol dependence,' is a disease that includes four symptoms: craving, loss of control, physical dependence, and tolerance"". 

Moreover, ""Alcohol abuse differs from alcoholism in that it does not include an extremely strong craving for alcohol, loss of control over drinking, or physical dependence"", etc etc.

>> Getting the facts @ NIAAA

 

Response:  Good point.  From one interested perspective, AA literature itself discusses this issue and draws a clear distinction between alcohol abuse and alcoholism. 

I can't make the correction. I'm not that good informed and my english is quite lousy. Could you..?  

How about mentioning something about alcoholism as a form of drug addiction? Correct me if I'm wrong, but alcohol is certainly a hard drug, characterized by intense (and possibly fatal) withdrawals... isn't that addiction?

This is mostly true.  The root