by Tony Chuks Modungwo

Created on: July 22, 2011

According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1996), alcoholism is defined as a disease condition due to the excessive use of alcoholic beverages. While Silvertein in his book ‘Alcoholism’ (1990) gives three criteria that the American Psychiatric Association listed for physicians to diagnose alcoholism as follows:

Physiological problems, such as hand tremors and blackouts. Psychological problems, such as an obsessive desire to drink. Behavioral problems that disrupt social or work life.

Traditionally, addiction is defined as being possible only to a psychoactive substance (for example alcohol, tobacco, or drugs), which is ingested, crosses the blood-brain barrier, and alters the natural chemical behavior of the brain temporarily.

Alcoholism can be of any age, background, income level, social, or ethnic group. Even the highly educated people are not spared. An alcoholic can totally disrupt family life and can cause harmful effects that can last a lifetime. Parental alcoholism may affect the fetus even before a child is born. Because crime and violence are associated with alcoholism, incest and battering are common in alcoholics’ families. Male alcoholics are wife beaters.

“Alcoholism also has other negative effects on the spouse of an alcoholic. The spouse may have feelings of hatred, self-pity, avoidance of social contacts, and may suffer exhaustion and become physically and mentally ill.” (Berger, 1993)

Peter and Esther Jones lived with their four children in Lagos. Sadly, however, Peter’s alcoholism caused the home to break up. He returned home virtually every night so drunk that he would turn the volume of both their radio and television sets to the highest levels. When his wife appealed to him to turn down the volume so as not to disturb the sleeping children and neighbors, he got her beaten up mercilessly. Ant time she demanded for money to buy food for the family, he claimed he had no money.

This was the routine with Peter and Esther until; she decided to take the easy way out. One fateful morning, she left home, and never returned. Peter never realized that he had lost his wife forever. He returned home everyday, expecting to see that she had come back to him. But as it gradually dawned on him that she would never come home to him again, he became so overwhelmed that he increased his drinking. On his way home one night after his drinking spree, he was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver and he

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