Stop Drinking Guide...What Is Alcoholism?

When you see someone in the street drinking something out of a brown paper bag, you automatically assume that they are drinking alcohol, although it is difficult to pin point back to when it actually took off. We can though confirm that the ideology of alcoholism dates back to 1849 when Magnus Huss first linked the consumption of alcohol to serious health conditions.

It wasn't until the late 1930s that the word alcoholism was officially recognized by the US as a result of the forming of the still well known support group Alcoholics Anonymous or as it is now commonly referred to as AA. Although is it not clearly defined as such they do insist that it lies somewhere between an illness and an allergy and that getting over it requires the assistance of team support methods of accountability and responsibility, which are still the preferred methods to control alcoholism.

It wasn't until Doctor E. Morton Jellinek from New England came along that problems being experienced by chronic alcoholics were actually first classified. He defined the problem as a person through excessive alcohol consumption developed serious health conditions both physically and mentally. An alcoholic would also encounter both domestic and economical problems as a result of persistent alcohol abuse.

He went on to add that this condition was in need of treatment and nothing has really changed since then apart from a few alterations in the definition by a series of medical affiliations. Today's American Medical Association refers to alcoholism as a particular chronic primary disease.

Some in the medical profession like Herbert Fingarette and Stanton Peele who really fall into the minority will not class alcoholism as a disease and it is more common for critics of the disease theory to classify the harmful effects of alcohol consumption as a result of heavy drinking.

So the definition of alcoholism remains an uncertainty meaning that it is extremely hard to detect, especially as there isn't much to separate an alcoholic from a person who just drinks on regular basis. I am afraid that this debate will just have to continue and if you want to participate in finding a solution then you need to investigate what is going on over at the stopdrinking.org blog as this seems to be the only place which is putting an effort at all into finding the answer.

Discover how to stop drinking alcohol found at http://www.stopdrinkingadvice.org/guide written by Ed Philips and get free advice to help you Quit Alcohol Today.