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From Moral Failing to Disease

Fashions change in nearly everything - including the popular and medical opinions about alcoholism. A half-century ago, most people (including medical professionals as well as alcoholics themselves) believed that alcoholism was a question of free will: People became alcoholics because they chose to drink and did not have the moral (or emotional or psychological) ability to stop drinking. Over the past several decades, ideas about the root causes of alcoholism changed substantially as the pendulum swung from one extreme (i.e. alcoholism is a moral weakness) to the other (alcoholism is a disease caused by a genetic predisposition). In the past decade, the pendulum has begun swinging back slightly so that now most medical and social-work professionals view alcoholism as a learned behavior - although there is also although there is little doubt most alcoholics have some element of genetic predisposition for the condition. This paper explores the phenomenon of alcoholism as we understand it at this point, as a condition that is partly learned (i.e. the result of freely engaged in choices) and partly genetic.

The question of whether alcoholism is an acquired behavior or a genetic or a combination of the two might not seem to be terribly important either to the alcoholic who is suffering or to her or his family and friends who suffer as well. But in fact it is extremely important in terms of how one treats the condition - and also in how the condition is viewed socially. We can draw an analogy to a condition like diabetes: It doesn't little good to lecture someone about the importance of good eating habits and regular exercise to prevent diabetes if their condition is genetically based (although of course diet and exercise can still help to control it), but it does a tremendous amount of good to talk to an individual about environmental factors if his or her diabetes is caused by poor eating habits (Tomer etal, 2001).

The current resea...

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From Moral Failing to Disease. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 19:16, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1688157.html