Children of alcoholics are four times more likely than other people to become alcoholics themselves.
Psychiatrist Mark Schuckit of the University of California, San Diego wondered exactly what's inherited that might encourage alcoholism. His alcoholic patients told him that as youngsters, drinking didn't affect them much. Schuckit tested 220 sons of alcoholics against 220 sons of non-alcoholics to see how sensitive they were to alcohol. And we found that about 40 percent of the sons of alcoholics showed very low levels of response to alcohol. And the same was true for perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the sons of non-alcoholics.