Word: chronic
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...that "alcoholism is no more a disease than thieving or lynching." Such attitudes are fading fast, to be sure, but not without leaving a residue of ambivalence. Says LeClair Bissell, 59, a recovered alcoholic and physician: "At the same time we say through our lips that alcoholism is a chronic disease, many of us feel in our guts that it's a moral or self-inflicted problem...
...exaggerated success rates of 70% after four years, the best estimates are that only 12% to 25% of patients manage to stay on the wagon for three years. Alcoholics Anonymous, the tremendously popular association of an estimated 1 million recovering alcoholics, remains the single biggest source of support for chronic drinkers. But its record is hard to assess because of members' anonymity. Even so, only 15% to 20% of alcoholics get any treatment at all. Says Enoch Gordis, director of the NIAAA: "Something very important is still missing here...
...second type included both men and women and made up about 75% of the study's alcoholics. They started chronic drinking usually well after the age of 25, rarely had trouble with the law, and often successfully kicked the habit. Their children were only twice as likely to have trouble with alcohol compared with the general population. Cloninger labeled this category of alcoholism "milieu limited," indicating a genetic predisposition to the disease that is triggered by extended heavy drinking...
Ethanol has a harmful effect on nearly every organ in the body. Chronic heavy drinking increases the risk of myocardial disease and high blood pressure. Alcohol eats away at the stomach and intestines, causing bleeding in some drinkers. Alcoholic males may experience shrunken testes, reduced testosterone levels, and even impotence. Sustained drinking sometimes disrupts women's menstrual cycles and can render them infertile. Among expectant mothers, drinking can produce birth defects and is a major cause of mental retardation in American children. Even the immune system's efficiency is reduced by alcohol. Studies are under way to determine whether heavy...
...that was formed in 1951 for relatives and friends of alcoholics, Al-Anon has more than doubled in size since 1975 and now boasts some 26,000 regional groups. But the real comer is the children-of-alcoholics movement, aimed at the nearly 30 million offspring of chronic drinkers in the U.S. Made up of a variety of organizations, the movement took off four years ago with the best-selling book Adult Children of Alcoholics, a guide to the dilemmas C.O.A.s face, by Janet Geringer Woititz, a human-relations counselor in Verona...