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Alcoholism is the consumption of or preoccupation with alcoholic beverages to the

extent that this behavior interferes with the alcoholic's normal personal, family, social, or

work life. The chronic alcohol consumption caused by alcoholism can result in

psychological and physiological disorders. Alcoholism is one of the world's most costly

drug use problems; with the exception of nicotine addiction, alcoholism is more costly to

most countries than all other drug use problems combined. Though alcohol is the trigger

for such a thing, other factors within the person drinking must be present to cause

alcoholism, such as: ones social environment, emotional health, and whither or not they

have the “gene”. Yes, a gene, alcoholism can be passed from parent to child, making the

child more easily taken by this drug, this is not to say that all children with alcoholic

parents will intern become alcoholics themselves, but the chance is much higher than

those of parents who don’t. (Baldwinresearch.com, 1992)

Identification of alcoholism may be difficult because there is no detectable

physiological difference between a person who drinks a lot and a person who can't

control his or her drinking. Identification involves an objective assessment regarding the

damage that imbibing alcohol does to the drinker's life compared to the subjective

benefits the drinker perceives from consuming alcohol. While there are many cases

where an alcoholic's life has been significantly and obviously damaged, there are still a

large number of borderline cases that can be difficult to classify. At least one genetic test

exists for an allele that is correlated to alcoholism and opiate addiction....