Some people have trouble determining whether they have an addiction to alcohol.

 The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV (DSM-IV) lists seven criteria that may indicate a substance dependence:

- Tolerance

- Withdrawal

- Use of the substance more often or in larger amounts than intended

- Unsuccessful efforts to control use

- Losing a lot of time to the substance

- Giving up important activities

- Continued use despite negative effects

According to the DSM-IV, experiencing any three of these things within the same year are indicative of a substance dependence. 

 One tool that is sometimes used to guage a person's relationship with alcohol is the "CAGE" questionnaire.

"The CAGE questionnaire is commonly used to determine the risk of alcohol-related problems:

One "yes" answer indicates a risk for abuse and/or dependence alcohol
use problems; more than one "yes" indicates a high likelihood." (HealthCommunities.com)

 According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV (DSM-IV),

After doing a fair amount of research on alcoholism I realized that while it was very easy to find information about all of the harmful results of excessive drinking, I had learned almost nothing about why or how some people develop alcoholism when most are able to drink with no problem.  For this reason, I decided to make this blog entry about the causes of alcoholism rather than the effects.

"Like the onset of many other diseases, alcoholism may afflict one
person and not another because of individual circumstances." (Alcoholism-Support.org).  Many factors can influence a person's risk of developing alcoholism.  These risk factors include emotional state, environment, age, and genetics.

Emotional state: Some people use alcohol as a way to cope with difficult, painful, or stressful situations. Also, people with depression or low self esteem could be more likely to develop a drinking problem.

Environment: Certain environmental factors can make a person more likely to become a drinker or an alcoholic.  "There is a 15-16% difference in individuals’ positive attitudes towards
drinking, and an 11% increase in alcohol consumption, attributable to
the density of alcohol outlets in their neighborhood."(AlcoholPolicyMD.com)  Alcohol can be a large part of social events.  Pressure to drink from
the media and from peers often begins in adolescence and ca continue into
adulthood. "Alcohol advertising helps create an environment that suggests that
alcohol consumption and over-consumption are normal activities, and
contributes to increased alcohol consumption." (AlcoholPolicyMD.com)

Age: The rate of drinking problems is highest among people aged 18 to 29, an lowest among people aged 65 and older. It has been found that people who begin drinking at a very young age, like 14 or younger, have a much higher risk of developing the disease than people who have their first drink at around 21.

Genetics: "Research shows that the risk for developing alcoholism does indeed run in families." (NIAAA.nih.gov).  Having parents orgrandparents who were alcoholics increases a person's risk of becoming one as well.

Of course, the presence of any or all of these factors does not guarantee drinking problems, and someone with none of the kown risk factors can end up becoming an alcoholic.  Alcoholism is complicated and multifactoral.

Process

 After I chose alcoholism as my topic, the first thing I did was begin to research it.  I looked for websites that either answered questions I had or contained information I had never heard before. To me, the research was the most interesting part of the project so far, because I learned a lot about my topic.  When I felt like I had a good understanding of my topic I started writing my blog posts.

How I picked my topic

I chose to do my project about alcoholism because it is a serious problem and I wanted to find out more about it.

New information

Here is some of the new information I've gained:

- I didn't realize how much acohol abuse could affect the brain.

- This link has a lot of information from various sources that I didn't know before.

- Long-term alcohol abuse can damage the blood.

 What I need at this point

I need to do more research and decide what exactly I want my project to say about alcoholism.  I don't want to just give evidence that alcoholism is harmful; I want to write something about why some people become alcoholics, or something about a possible solution.

Alcohol, like many things, is generally safe in moderation, but when a person consumes large amounts of alcohol regularly there can be serious consequences for their health.  Alcoholism can have serious effects not only on the life and physical health of the alcoholic, but also on their family and friends.  Alcohol abuse is the third most deadly preventable cause of death in the United States, surpassed only by tobacco and poor diet.  According to America.gov, alcohol causes over 2 million deaths worldwide each year. 

"Almost every system in the body can be negatively affected by alcohol." (About.com)

Effects on Health

- Alcoholism can lead to liver diseases such as alcoholic hepatitis and cirrhosis.

 "Though alcohol affects every organ of the body, it's most
dramatic impact is upon the liver." (HealthCheckSystems.com).  Normally, the liver metabolizes fat and converts it into energy to be used by the body, but when alcohol is present, the liver metabolizes the alcohol first.  When this happens too often, the liver's actual structure changes and its ability to metabolize fats can be permanently impaired.   

- Excessive use of alcohol can lead to, or be used to cope, with depression, anxiety, or insomnia.

- It can increase the risk of kidney failure.

"The kidneys regulate water, acid/base balance, certain hormones and
minerals (calcium, potassium, sodium, etc.) in the body. Alcohol can
influence or compromise the balancing functions of the kidneys, and
thus can cause severe consequences on kidney function and thus the
body." (BloodAlcohol.info). 

- Alcohol abuse can increase the risk of developing cancer of the liver, pancreas,
rectum, breast, mouth, pharynx, larynx and esophagus.

- If a woman drinks while pregnant, her baby may be born with fetal alcohol syndrome, which causes physical and behavioral abnormalities.

Effects on Family and Friends

- USA Today reported that 76 million non-alcoholic Americans are affected by alcohol abuse.

- According to Susan Brink of US News and World Report, the children of alcoholics are two to four times more likely to develop alcoholism.

Drunk Driving

One of the main ways alcohol causes death is drunk driving. 

- One person dies every half hour due to an accident caused by a drunk driver. 

- Approximately 16,000 people are killed in alcohol related crashes each year.

- Alcohol contributes to almost half of all car crash deaths.

Merriam-Webster defines alcoholism as a "chronic disorder marked by excessive and usually compulsive drinking of alcohol leading to psychological and physical dependence or addiction."

Alcoholics feel a strong need to drink even after realizing that their use of alcohol has begun to cause problems.  Alcoholism  consists of four symptoms:

- Craving: A strong need for alcohol

- Loss of Control: The inability to control or limit one's alcohol consumption

- Physical Dependence: The body is addicted to alcohol.  Abstaining from it leads to withdrawal symptoms like nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety.

- Tolerance: The amount of alcohol needed to produce an effect increases.

(About.com).

Here are some facts about alcoholism:

- About 10.5 million Americans exhibit signs of alcohol abuse.7.5 million are considered "problem drinkers."

- Less than 50% of those treated for alcoholism are sober a year after recieving treatment.

- The typical American child views about 180,000 beer ads before reaching the legal drinking age.

- People who begin drinking at 15 are 4 times more likely to develop alcoholism than those who begin at 21.

I think schools should encourage their students to think about and
study what interests them, but without pushing them to decide right
away what they want to do when they are older.  I think school should
be a place where students learn about topics they care about, as well
as a place where they are introduced to new information and ideas.
While some people have a good idea of what they want to do from a young
age and would benefit from being allowed to learn, many have no idea
until they try out a few different things.  

 I think one of
the most important reasons that it's so difficult to determine the
purpose of school is education serves different purposes for different people. 

That is why I think that the most important thing for a school to do is to

frequently reevaluate its teaching methods to make sure that it is meeting the

needs of its students. 

The last chapter of The Things They Carried is called "The Lives
of the Dead", and it is mostly about Linda, the first girl the narrator
fell in love with (even though they were only nine), and how he was affected when she
died of a brain tumor.  After Linda died, the nine year old Tim O'Brien
was devastated and used stories to temporarily bring her back to life
in his imagination.  It was interesting because throughout the book the
author talks about the way the soldiers used story telling to cope with
all of the death they see in Vietnam and to make losing their friends
to the war more bearable, and this chapter tells the story of when the
narrator first began doing that.

The chapter, "Speaking of Courage" was interesting because it was different from the rest of the book. It tells the story of one of the characters, Norman Bowker, after he's been home from Vietnam for years and shows how the war, and Kiowa's death in particular, affected him.  Bowker felt personally responsible for what happened to Kiowa and that haunted him after he left the war. 

I thought the chapter "The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong" was pretty interesting.  In that chapter Rat Kiley tells a story about another soldier's girlfriend flying to Vietnam to be with her boyfriend.  According to Rat, when she arrived in Vietnam she was friendly and happy and in love her her boyfriend, Mark Fossie, but as time went on, and she became immersed in the war atmosphere, she changed into a completely different person.  It was interesting because it showed how being in a war can change someone, even though that particular story was a pretty extreme example.

I've read the first seven chapters of The Things They Carried,
and so far, I really like this book.  The author, Tim O'Brien paints a
very interesting and detailed picure of what it was like to be an
American soldier during the Vietnam War.  The way O'Brien tells the story makes it easy to see the war from the soldiers' perspective. He describes what they see and hear, and also how they feel and what they think.  For me, the fact that he explains what the soldiers are thinking and why they do things makes the characters more relateable and the story more interesting.

This semester my ninth grade English class is reading the play, Hamlet by William Shakespeare.  Every night we read a scene from the play, and the next day discuss it as a class with our teachers, Mr. Chase and Ms Weinraub.  As a class, we talk about things like themes, plot changes, and characters in Hamlet. 

This is a research report written by Danielle Duncan and I.  We submerged an egg in different liqiuds and observed which liquids were able to pass through the eggshell into the egg to test the selective permeability of its membrane.

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We had to record a podcast of ourselves desrcibing ourselves in Spanish.

If I could do this project again, I would elaborate more about myself.  Unfortunately,  I no longer have the file saved to my computer. 

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