Download file Alcoholism

Alcohol dependence is a chronic, relapsing disease characterized by a loss of control over alcohol consumption and continued use despite severe social, physical, and psychological consequences. Hallmarks include tolerance (needing more for the same effect), withdrawal symptoms upon abstinence (ranging up to life-threatening delirium tremens), loss of control, and a narrowing of daily life to obtaining and consuming alcohol. Alcohol is the only socially normalized addiction – and herein lies its literary potential: the functional alcoholic who appears competent externally while disintegrating internally. The investigator who stares at crime scene photos through the bottom of a bottle. The mother who loves her children and fails daily. Alcoholism as a character trait creates a specific unreliability of memory – blackouts as narrative gaps that the reader must fill together with the character. And moral ambiguity: guilt and illness as an unsolvable knot.