People who act terribly tend to be drinkers because the addictive drinking makes them that way
“Prohibition….propaganda blamed alcohol for the destruction of the family, the persistence of poverty, the high rate of crime, the problem of illiteracy, and the ubiquity of sin generally. Clearly, their arguments were widely accepted even though it is all a big and fallacious mix-up of cause and effect. It’s not that liquor caused all these terrible things; it’s that the people who engage in terrible behaviors tend to also be drinkers.”
So claimed Jeffrey A. Tucker in an article entitled “Repeal the Drinking Age” at www.Mises.org. Even my fellow libertarians, including those writing for a think-tank whose work is devoted to educating others about the ideas of the greatest economist ever (Ludwig von Mises), can get alcoholism backwards.
Yet Prohibition propaganda wasn’t entirely correct either in its ascribing cause and effect. Liquor isn’t the problem; it’s the person on the drug. Roughly 80% of bad behaviors, including crime, family break-ups and what most consider “sin” (including adultery and compulsive gambling) have their roots in alcoholism, either in the person or in one or both parents. As I lamented in Drunks, Drugs & Debits, little can be given gold-standard proof when the disease causing the misbehaviors is one that nobody “has” until they are “cured” (sober), even if the anecdotal (i.e., real-life stories) evidence is nothing short of overwhelming.
Unfortunately, because, as alcoholism authority George E. Vaillant explained, “Alcoholism affects personality and perceptions about the past so markedly that the true facts of an alcoholic’s life can often be discovered only by prospective study,” the only effective method by which to obtain incontrovertible evidence is via such studies. Vaillant used a longitudinal study, The Harvard Medical School’s Study of Adult Development, in his book, The Natural History of Alcoholism and its progeny, The Natural History of Alcoholism: Revisited, to answer questions such as, “Is alcoholism a symptom or a disease?” and “Are alcoholics, before they begin to abuse alcohol, different from nonalcoholics?” The study followed 660 men from 1940 to 1980 (and an additional 100 or so through 1995 for the newer book). Information was collected about numerous aspects of the men’s lives, including their use of alcohol. The answers were unequivocal: alcoholism is a disease that causes numerous adverse behavioral symptoms and that alcoholics as children are no different from other children.
You can do your own variation of a longitudinal study. After digging deep into the truth of the matter and letting years pass by, figure out how many people in whom you have personally observed destructive behaviors drink or use other drugs heavily. You will find, as I did only after extended observations and some very deep and, to the codependent, uncomfortable digging, that few people act badly in serial fashion who cannot, in the end, be identified as alcohol or other-drug addicts. You will also find that when these addicts are sober for several years, you will be hard-pressed to find any semblance of misbehaviors that before enveloped their lives.