Alcoholism

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ALCOHOLISM

Imagine a terrible disease striking America, a disease of unknown cause.
Suppose that this disease is so harmful to the nervous system that eighteen
million people go insane for periods lasting from a few hours to weeks to
months, with the madness recurring and getting worse over periods ranging
from fifteen to thirty years. If untreated, the victims go permanently
insane, or die. They commit suicide at a rate up to seventy-five times
higher than that of the general population. Imagine that those afflicted by
the disease itself and the other illnesses it causes already occupy more
than half the hospital beds in the United States on any given day, and that
last year the illness killed nearly 100,000 Americans. Suppose further that
those out of hospital, during their spells of insanity, commit acts so
destructive that the material and spiritual lives of whole families are in
jeopardy, leaving many millions of other people cruelly affected. Work in
business, industry and professions is faulty, sabotaged or left undone.
Finally, imagine that this disease so alters its victims' judgment, so
brainwashes them, that they cannot see that they are sick at all: Their
view of life has become so distorted that they try with all their might to
go on being ill.
This dread disease is already among us. It has been with us for
centuries. It is, of course, alcoholism.

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