SUMMARY

A WIDE variety of people habitually drinks to excess--the tired businessman, the over-wrought professional man, the convivial adolescent, the inadequate ne'er-do-well, frustrated men and women from every walk of life, and some in whom this is the only obvious symptom of an inner disharmony. All these people have in common a desire to escape unpleasant reality. Alcohol is the medium which enables them to view the world in a rosier light. Some of these heavy drinkers will in time become addicts. The age of onset of addiction and the extent of over-indulgence necessary to produce it are probably determined by constitutional factors. Some can drink heavily for a lifetime without becoming addicted; the resistance of others fails in their twenties. Whatever the psychological disharmony which leads an individual to use alcohol as a drug in excessive doses, once the constitutional barrier has broken down, the patient is in the grip of a progressive disease over which he has a swiftly declining control.