Word: hirsh
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Author Joseph Hirsh points out that in the past 100 years the amount of alcohol (not alcoholic beverages) consumed has gone up only .02%; more beer and less whiskey is being drunk today. But the point is that there are a lot more people around who have reached the drinking age. The modern world, Hirsh says, encourages drinking. It is a "world of acute tensions and violence, and it is from this kind of world that sick people come...
...Much Alcohol. No pious bluenose, Hirsh is a hardbitten, 34-year-old health administrator who has spent nearly twelve years studying drinkers. He has worked for the U.S. Public Health Service, the World Health Organization, the Research Council on Problems of Alcohol and as chief of preventive medicine for the Twelfth Air Force in Italy. He does not denounce alcohol as the root of all evils. Says he: "Traffic accidents, crime, promiscuity and divorce go deeper and far beyond alcohol...
...Hirsh says that there is now a U.S. total of some 3,750,000 "excessive drinkers." Another 56,000,000-odd are social drinkers, who can take it or leave it alone. About 60% of the problem drinkers are "symptomatic drinkers," i.e., they are mentally ill to start with, and drinking is a symptom, not a cause of their illness. With the other 40%, the trouble seems to start with their drinking rather than their personalities. They may be "occupational drinkers" (e.g., bartenders, salesmen, newspaper reporters), who fall into the habit because of their jobs; or "compensatory drinkers...
...Little Research. The U.S., Hirsh concludes, may as well admit that it is a "drinking society," and "make provision for those among us too ill to cope with it." Prohibition is "as unscientific as it is unrealistic." But Hirsh is no pessimist. Psychiatry can help, he thinks. So can such organizations as Alcoholics Anonymous...
...biggest long-range need is for research, Hirsh believes. Science still does not know why some people can drink safely and others cannot. The underlying cause may be psychological (e.g., immaturity) or physiological (e.g., a constitutional weakness). Excessive drinking costs the U.S. $1 billion a year in lost wages, jails, relief, etc., but the total spent for research in alcoholism is less than $500,000. Says Hirsh: "This glaring paradox continues year in & year out despite the fact that excessive and problem drinking affects the lives of almost as many people as tuberculosis, cancer and infantile paralysis combined...