Barney Rickenbacker wrote: >I wish to ask members of the Group why it is that some people encounter >devastating setbacks in many areas of their life from alcohol use, say, >in their 20s and 30s, and why others, who are very heavy drinkers and >who drink from an early age, never seem to experience difficulties >except for perhaps physical problems late in life that are likely >alcohol related. > >I am curious if this issue is discussed at all nowadays; and I preferred >to ask the question in the usual, more general way. > >I thank those of you in advance who would like to reply. I"ll be >pleased to hear of articles, books, etc or receive a paragraph or two >resolving this question "once and for all" -- the quick fix. > Age (and gender) and alcohol have fascinated me literally for decades. Ever sin ce the commencement of general population survey studies in the post-Repeal era, students of the matter have known that age, gender, and social class do an extraordinarily good job of sorting out "the variance" on such variables as drink/abstain, drinking patterns, and drinking-related problems. In a sense--an d ironically--social scientists actually answered the question of how to explain variations in drinking in the general population a long time ago! I.e., just su ch demographic factors explain them. Equally ironically, however, such variables simply beg the deeper question of *why* these associations are what they are. T he prevailing methodological and analytical orientations of survey research do not tend to press questions "that far back"--survey analysts more often tend to be quite happy to say that (for instance) that "age explains x% of the variance in variable y" without also asking themselves *why* it does so. Moreover, the prevailing ideology of the modern alcoholism movement broadcast the (plainly incorrect, from a survey perspective) view that "alcoholism was an equal-opportunity disease"--i.e., that it struck anyone and everyone with equal likelihood. When survey studies discovered that the highest rates of drinking-related proble ms they measured were found in younger (rather than middle-aged) men, Don Cahalan popularized the notion of "maturing out" as the process by which most men ended up moderating their drinking but a smaller proportion persisted with their youthful practices into middle-age. Hence, what we used to like to call "alcoholism" was not so much a bundle of characteristics newly acquired in middle-age but instead the persistence of practices that "should have" melted away with advancing years . My own belief is that alcohol sociology still needs a grand synthesis between th ose aspects of social structural theory that focus on "ascribed status" (i.e., age & sex) and modernization theory. One of the chief characteristics of modernization--in the traditional sociological view of social structure at least--is that "ascriptive" and "particularist" status gives way to "achieved" a nd "universalist" status. That drinking's norms and structural associations with a ge and gender both reflect and have changed with this aspect of modernization--and in that sense drinking represents a very fertile territory for further theoretical development re social structural transformation. Please pardon infelicities of wording--in a rush! Fascinating question. Thanks for asking it! -- Ron Roizen, Ph.D. voice: 510-848-9123 fax: 510-848-9210 home: 510-848-9098 1818 Hearst Ave. Berkeley, CA 94703 U.S.A. [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]