Alcoholic Personality
Demystifying the Concept of Alcoholic Personality
What is an Alcoholic Personality? Does personality help determine whether you will be an alcoholic or not? Many experts have theorized about this for a long time, and many skeptics have denied the theory for just as long. Early studies of alcoholism focused on the "degeneracy" of the alcoholic. Degeneracy was a catch-all term years ago, and it included sexual promiscuity, retardation or feeblemindedness and criminality. As the twentieth century arrived, researchers' reasoning for alcoholism included the idea that alcoholics have a dependent personality, likely created from a childhood dependence on their parents. Some psychiatrists also blamed orality for over-drinking, saying that certain people have a pre-occupation with oral consumption, and this might lead to alcoholism.
Even quick looks into these theories can reveal inconsistencies in the alcoholic/personality connection. Why don't all people with oral fixations become alcoholics? People often chew their nails if they're nervous - if they are orally fixated, why don't they drink? And if a person is dependent, why would they become dependent on alcohol rather than on another person? Few people today still lend any credence to the old theories about dependence and oral fixations.
So as those theories are discounted, is there any more believability when one looks at the alcoholic personality? Many are skeptical that personality plays any part in alcoholism. Do all people who are alcoholics have the same type of personality? The resounding answer is no. There may be some traits in personality that will lead to alcoholism, but these can't always be pointed out with any accuracy.
Personality is based on an individual's consistent and distinct actions and outlooks, or their overall behavior style. Biological or inherited traits are not described as personality traits, except as they obviously influence behavior. A person with a sunny and bright outlook is not as likely to abuse alcohol as one with a pessimistic, gloomy outlook, but this still isn't a scientific truth, just a basic observation.
In the field of alcoholic personality research, they generally reject the notion that personality has a direct bearing on whether a person will eventually abuse alcohol or not. This is due to the fact that separate studies have never found consistently the same personality traits that affect alcoholics. They fit into more than one personality group, and sometimes the groups overlap, but it's difficult to pin down one “type” as more likely to become an alcoholic down the road.
Interestingly, there is now a group referred to as those with a pre-alcoholic personality. In studies, people ages 16 to 21 who are drinkers showed higher scores on some of the tests that predict or confirm the alcoholic personality. This has established a solid look into young problem drinkers and drug abusers. If the tendencies can be confirmed early enough, some researchers hope that people may be warned before their drinking escalates to a problematic level.