Nature or Nurture and Alcoholism

However, this once widely accepted view of alcoholism has been almost entirely subsumed as new ideas about the fundamental causes of alcoholism have emerged. From a model that posited alcoholism as a form of moral weakness, we shifted to a diametrically different view, which is that alcoholism should be is as a disease that is caused by a genetic predisposition toward the condition - a model that presents alcoholics as being exactly analogous to women who have a genetic predisposition towards breast cancer. In the past decade, the pendulum has swung back slightly from the alcohol-is-a-disease model so that it i

. . .
ther members of your family are addicted (http://www.alcoholismtreatment.org/). In general, researchers have been far more cautious in making such assessments. There are some indications that there are genotypes that are likely to produce individuals more inclined to be alcoholics than is the case with other genotypes. But the relationships between a particular genotype and something as complex as alcoholic behavior has never yet been clearly established. Genetics has easy answers for some aspects of an individual such as eye color. But not complex behaviors like - for example - alcoholic black-outs. The current consensus seems to be that most individuals (in most populations, regardless of culture or historical era) become alcoholics in largest measure because they choose to drink. And they choose to drink because drinking has for them what psychologists term a positive value. (Or possibly because drinking has a less negative value than not drinking.) However, for most people who become alcoholics there is probably also a genetic element, and in some populations (such as Native Americans) the genetic component may be greater than it is in other populations (Atrens, 2001). Pinpointing the Bad Genes Most researchers argue
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Cruz California, Nature Nurture, Bad Genes, Etiology Matters, Wyoming Ethiopia, Stafford Carron, Journal Psychology, Journal Psychiatry, November Behavioral, Drug Issues, et al, aversion therapy, genetic predisposition, et al 1999, learned behavior, al 1999, drug alcohol, journal drug, alcoholism caused, lemarquand et, mehrabian 2001, lemarquand et al, akins et al, al 1999 1, et al 2003,
Approximate Word count = 1878
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Nature or Nurture and Alcoholism