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Alcoholism & Its Affect on Your Life

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Alcoholism and Its Effect on Your Life

Alcohol is very common in today’s society. Many people drink beer, wine, or liquor. Most people can drink socially with few or no problems. Then there are those people that abuse or are dependent upon alcohol. Alcoholism is the common term for these two disorders and is the extreme dependence on excessive amounts of alcohol. People may use alcohol to help anxiety, unhappiness, loneliness, or other personal problems. There are many risks associated with alcohol use and excessive consumption of alcohol affects your brain, your behavior, and your overall general health. Research over the years has improved and much progress has been made in the treatment of alcohol use disorders. Article 1. Genetic research: who is at risk for alcoholism? John C. Crabbe, Howard J. Edenberg and Tatiana Foroud. There are a number of factors that work together to cause a person to become an alcoholic. Recent genetic studies have shown that close relatives of alcoholics were more likely to become alcoholics themselves. The risk holds true even for children who were adopted away from their biological families at birth and raised in a non-alcoholic family, with no knowledge of their biological family’s difficulties with alcohol. Additional research is presently being done to determine if genetic factors could account for differences in alcohol metabolism that may increase the risk of an individual becoming an alcoholic. Other factors may include stress that is ongoing or just the addictive nature of alcohol itself. Article 2. Alcohol dependence, withdrawal, and relapse. Howard C. Becker. Article 3. Alcohol’s effects on brain and behavior. R. Adron Harris, Adolf Pfefferbaum and Edith V. Sullivan. Alcohol has a depressive effect on the brain. The barrier between blood and your brain does not prevent alcohol from

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