Alcoholism is a Disease

Alcoholism is a disease, because the set of phenomena resulting from the loss of control when drinking, meets all the requirements required to consider medicine as a disease of a particular set of symptoms and signs: it has a natural history is a clinical readily identifiable and similar in all individuals who have it, there is an etiology (cause), a pathogenesis (biological factors underlying the disease), prognosis, treatment, and a number of strategies for prevention.

Alcoholism is a chronic, insidious development and progressive evolution, characterized by the inability of individuals to control their drinking, which results in most of the times when alcohol is consumed, the affected do it excessively and develop problems with their health, family, work and society in general. This loss of control is a result of psychic and physical dependence on alcohol that the individual has developed from eating too frequently and for a time and a genetically determined predisposition for addiction to substances.

For alcoholics, can be described as a physical compulsion coupled with a mental obsession, as it has the characteristic physical desire to consume alcohol beyond our ability to control, which I defy all rules of common sense.

Alcoholism is a progressive disease
Progressively evolving almost from the start to drink. Alcoholism is not a habit, but the consequence of a habit. The act of drinking can be a habit at a time, but the habit can go to excess and then to addiction. We must not forget that the road to addiction begins with the use, is by habit, past abuse and ends on the addictive. But once you get to the disease, it progresses through several phases: pre-alcoholic initial, critical and terminal. Alcoholism is a Disease.

The same progression of the disease if the alcoholic does not stop drinking, inevitably evolve toward death. The most frequent causes of death in alcoholics are violent (car accident, brain injuries, homicides fight, suicides, etc.).. Also liver cirrhosis, fulminant bronchopneumonia, malnutrition and alcoholic coma are common causes of death from alcoholism. Mortality from alcoholism (violent causes cirrhosis) is within the top ten causes of death in Mexico.