Risk of alcoholism, need info?!
Answers:
The risks are endless. Thing is, no alcoholic has ever considered the risk factors involved. Kids who start drinking at parties and acting socially while doing so, don't think or realize the extent of the chances, risks, or even the responsibilities when doing so. They think and say things like, "oh it won't happen to me." Addictions, like alcoholism creep up slowly. Far surpassing the the evidence of a looming habit. One day a person drinks, they enjoy it, and before they realize it, the results are endless. Making a fool of themselves in public or private. Causing stress, family fights, and strains. Drunk drivings (thats plural) creep in eventually, bringing financial burdens, court time off work, if not losing a job because of a D.U.I. conviction, and/or losing a driver's license. Causing bodily harm and sometimes manslaughter charges for alcohol related injury accidents while driving or working around machinery. Deteriorating health slips in, unnoticed for years. Tuberculosis, heart disease, impotence, sexual disfunction, diabetes, liver failure and disease is a top killer, kidney failure, blindness, eventual and complete loss of equilibrium, muscular control, loss, and disease and of course, alcohol poisoning. Basically the body becomes "pickled" from the constant consumption and saturation of alcohol. The body's chemical producing functions become disabled, and one begins to sweat a "septic" odor of body waste and alcohol mixed. Loss of bladder and bowel function, and constant urination and bowel movement malfunction. Then, after a long slow and painful choice to drink, that began as a social pleasure, eventually there's death. There are just a couple of choices that one has after becoming a full blown alcoholic...Sobriety: to refrain from and never touching another drop....Institutions: hospitals, constantly in jail/prison, or mental and detox facilities....Insanity: the total and complete disfunction of one's mind as it deteriorates and becomes numb with "pickling" and saturation of alcohol...and the final phase is Death. Those are the choices an alcoholic has. Non other. No healing medicines. No reverting back to the beginning. Just these few saddening choices. It's sad to see alcoholics crumble and fall out of normal social human behavior that began with one drink, making fools of themselves in public, passing out on sidewalks, in bushes, at store fronts panhandling for another bottle, urinating/crapping themselves, and the list goes on. It's sad, but society accepts, and with a smile, a casual social drinker...but won't accept a DRUNK. And the deaths caused from alcohol related incidents. The innocent lives lost because of it. But those are the results of drinking. The risks and just a few facts about alcohol.
The actual risk of being an alcoholic is very low. Of the millions of people on the planet that drink, very few are alcoholics. Breaking it down we find most people are social drinkers having few drink in a year or a few drinks weekly. Then there are drinkers that drink more often but still only a couple of drinks of couple of days a week. Then we begin the minority of drinkers that drink heavily. These people can be binge drinkers that drink on weekends but drink heavily or drink a few times a month and drink heavily. These people may do it for a lifetime with no other issues or some do become alcoholics. Finally, we find the very smallest group of people that either have a genetic predisposition to becoming an alcohol abuser or an alcoholic. The abuser might be a form of an addiction condition-this case being addiction to alcohol. For the person that had a genetic predisposition (science is still discovering just what gene it is) they can not help themselves. The risk for these last two groups are very high. They may be addicted from the first drink or not until years of drinking.
It varies but some say that less than (<5%) of drinkers are or become alcoholics. Compare that to cocaine and heroin and meth.
http://www.enotalone.com/article/5540.ht…
http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofacts/heroin…
2010 Census Count
U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves announces that the 2010 Census showed the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2010, was 308,745,538.
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/#panel…
Of these 4% lets say more than 50% die from health related issue brought about by alcohol abuse. Lets compare that to other "diseases."
12, 349, 821.5 Alcoholics of the 308,745,538 USA population
6, 174, 910.76 die from the disease of alcoholism
Cardiovascular Disease Statistics
"Estimates for the year 2006 are that 81,100,000 people in the United States have one or more forms of cardiovascular disease (CVD)."
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.j…
Speedog of YA on Smoking and Cancer
"Every year, close to 344,000 Americans die of lung
disease. Lung disease is America's number three
killer, responsible for one in seven deaths."
(Page 3)
http://www.lungusa.org/assets/documents/…
"The current estimated human population for the planet earth in 2010 is 6,865,300,000 by the United States Census Bureau. The United Nations estimates that world population will be over the 7,000,000,000 mark in 2011. Recent U.N. organized surveys performed in multiple countries have found the average percentage of people who suffer from some sort of cancer is 31%. The American Cancer Society has found similar numbers in its studies of North and South America."
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentag…
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Risks of alcoholism is a very small fraction of the problems of this planet that currently ails us.
It destroys your liver.
And you become dependent on it.
