Alcoholism New Facts

Alcoholism is not just a man’s disease anymore, says the most recent reports in Science Daily Magazine. “We found that for women born after World War II, there are lower levels of abstaining from alcohol, and higher levels of alcohol dependence, even when looking only at women who drank,” the findings said. However, alcohol use and abuse was no greater or lesser for young men, which indicates that the gender gap is closing. Women born in the 1940s-1960s grew up with changing cultural norms that put women into the work force, in colleges and brought them to more equal grounds. Alcohol consumption for native-born Americans is generally more taboo, and therefore more prone to excess, than for European citizens, where there is a lower legal drinking age.

“Alcohol can change gene expression in the brain. This is believed to be responsible for many of the hallmarks of addiction, such as tolerance, physical dependence and cravings, as well as the consequences of chronic alcoholism, such as neurotoxicity (brain damage),” said Dr. R. Adron Harris, director of UT Austin’s Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research. Just as a computer virus corrupts the system, alcohol consumption can also tinker with proteins and regions of the brain, leaving its mark. In his study, he found that 163/4,000 brain tissue genes (4%) were found to differ by 40% or more between alcoholics and non-alcoholics. The genes most susceptible to change were the sensitive “white matter” called myelin. Myelin is the insulation between the brain’s information-carrying cells, which would explain why cognitive deficiency is one of the effects of alcohol.

One way researchers are looking into addiction treatment for alcoholism is by studying the way alcohol affects the inner-workings of the brain. For instance, researchers at the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland recently tested twelve volunteers and compared brain activity using magnetic resonance imaging. The study found that alcohol use caused volunteers to be unable to identify images of people’s faces who exhibited fear. The amygdala, which registers emotional reactions in the brain, lit up when fearful faces were shown to the sober volunteers; but after modest alcohol consumption, the threat-detecting brain circuits were significantly dulled. “At one end of the spectrum, less anxiety might enable us to approach a new person at a party,” explains Marina Wolf at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. “But at the other end of the spectrum, we may fail to avoid an argument or a fight,” she said. She added that the study results make a compelling case against those individuals who feel that the tendency toward poor decision making after alcohol use “doesn’t apply” to them.

Binge drinking may be a social rite of passing for teens and college students these days, but the number of drinking and driving accidents and deaths is no joke. The effects of alcohol can never be cured when you’re living with the guilt of having accidentally killed someone due to your negligence. Of course, the problem lies in the fact that no one thinks alcoholism can happen to them. People find ways to justify their lifestyles and drinking alcohol is often glamorized in America. If the use of drugs and alcohol is treated as chronic diseases, as they are in Europe, then perhaps more people will undergo real treatment.

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