Abstract
A multivariate natural processes model for thinking about alcohol use and abuse is offered as an alternative to the traditional static-entity, single-cause way of thinking that historically generated a series of formal institutional attacks on different supposed causes of alcohol abuse, but which failed to solve the alcohol problem. The work seeks a model that better fits what is known about the alcohol problem, and one that leads to more effective informal constraints on alcohol abuse.
Alcoholics are viewed as being at some stage of an alcoholic process, a rehabilitation process, a labeling process, a clinicalization process and a dissocialization process. This way of thinking challenges the traditional notion that alcoholics are all-of-a-kind entities and that there is a single cause, or even a single set of causes, that account for the drinking of all alcoholics, or that explains the drinking of the same person at different times.
Rather, it directs us to consider the dynamics of the changing combinations of interacting social, psychological and physiological forces influencing a person's drinking behavior as he progresses in the several processes.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.