Re: Alcoholism, Alcohol Tolerance, and genetics: the "hangover" gene

I myself have been following the medical industries attempts to divine a cure for alcoholism for some time.

As of this date, their success in this arena has been pitiful. Most drunks don’t get sober. The false promise of a pill or a shot that would fix a hopeless drunk just hasn’t held up in the face of this disease.

I am a fan of science, I love that Science is always exploring the unknown and adding to our knowledge of this world. I hope they never stop.


But here we are facing a disease that is most resistant to ALL forms of medical treatment. This disease has a physical dimension to be sure, we metabolize alcohol differently from non-alcoholics, and there are subtle differences in our brains as well. And the pharmaceutical industry has come up with a few concoctions that they hoped would make a dent in this enormous problem. The fact is, they have made little difference in the obsessive relationship an alcoholic has for alcohol.

We will throw every thing that means anything to us away for that next drink. It is that powerful. There is no pill that has yet produced the needed physic change. Our freedom does not come in that form.

I went to the link you provided and found this statement at the end of the article about drunken fruit flies… "Moreover, if you understand the biology, then we might be able to develop pharmacological tools that can treat somebody who has already developed alcoholism,"

In my opinion, it’s not the biology that needs to be understood. This is a spiritual malady. Alcoholism does indeed run in families, and I am fairly confident that a genetic link exists, but the disease is manifest in the obsession that leads to the first drink, and less in the craving that sets in after we start to drink. Most offerings from the pharmacological school address the effect alcohol has on the body after it has been injected, not on dealing with that first drink.

Maybe genetic engineering as babies, inserting or striping out this gene or that gene might prevent a baby from becoming a full blown alcoholic as an adult. But who wants to live in a world where we screw around with a perfectly healthy babies DNA to prevent a disease of habitually poor choices.

On the road to the good stuff,
Richard
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