WHAT HAPPENS OVER THE LONG-TERM

What happens over the long-term course of alcoholism focuses our view on a number of issues found throughout the literature of alcoholism studies, placing them in a quite different perspective. When trying to encompass the effects of what may be a chronic condition, lasting for decades, the importance of short-term prognoses and treatment results falls back and gives centre stage to the overall pattern of events. Treatment episodes recur and become an accumulated treatment experience, a voluntary consumption pattern of treatment services. The spontaneous recoveries that take place in the community and the undiagnosed cases of alcoholism that do not reach for medical intervention take on a special significance in charting the general course. The backdrop of maturing and ageing processes interacts with a life course of events in determining the direction of the play.