> Although the origin of this concept cannot be traced to a single event or discovery, the work of the scientists and educators affiliated with the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies greatly influenced the theories of that era. To increase public awareness of the problem of alcoholism, the Yale Center stressed that alcoholism could afflict a man regardless of his position in the class structure. The rapid increase in the number of public treatment facilities is probably largely due to the success of these efforts.
The classic disease concept of alcoholism, as promulgated in the 1930s, states that alcoholism is a specific disease to which some people are vulnerable. Those who are vulnerable develop the disease if they take up drinking. From apparently normal social drinking, they progress to drinking ever greater amounts, to private and secret drinking, to developing an increased tolerance to liquor, and to experiencing withdrawal distress if drinking is interrupted; they begin to have blackouts and they forget the previous day's drinking bout. Most crucially: those afflicted by the disease inevitably progress to uncontrolled drinking because the disease produces a distinctive disability--loss of control, or a loss of the power to make choices. According to this theory, alcoholism progresses stage by stage in a regular, fairly standard course that does not respect a person's individual characteristics. Abstention is the only hope, because the disease is incurable. At best, an alcoholic learns to abstain from the first fatal drink that invariably triggers a new descent into drunken oblivion (Fingarette, 1988, p. 2-3).
Despite these developments, however, the idea that alcoholism can afflict anyone regardless of social class is by no means universally accepted--even by people during the 1930s through the 1940s, when this theory was widely promulgated. For example, in the 1930s, physicians in large metropolitan areas perce...