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Preface

The Prevention of Alcoholism Through Nutrition (1981)

This book deals with the devastating problem of alcoholism in three unprecedented ways.

1. With no wasted words, it tells in straightforward, practical terms what one can do to attain alcoholism prevention most effectively. What you will find in these pages will make complete sense. Moreover, you will be able to follow the recommendations. There is nothing outlandish here, nothing beyond the reach out any man or woman, young or old.

2. In ways that self-styled experts rarely discuss--because these experts simply don’t have the information this book contains--the pages that follow will show you how and why prevention is the only sane approach to the problem of alcoholism. Preventing the problem from ever arising could save this nation millions of dollars annually, and untold heartache.

3. The book gives the layman background information that will make it clear how the disease we call alcoholism starts, and why the "experts" of past decades have done such an unsatisfactory job of helping people cope with it. You will see evidence that alcoholism is a baffling metabolic disorder that slowly, soon ferociously, and often fatally, attacks individuals who are vulnerable to it but who have never learned the simple facts about how they can protect themselves against it.

Most people, including the experts, have no grasp of the metabolic details involved in individual cases of alcoholism. Aggravating that fact is the further unfortunate fact that there are all too few investigators who have the know-how to evaluate the problem in critical terms that could help potential victims.

Such an investigator would have to have a working knowledge of (1) the biochemical intricacies of metabolism, (2) the exacting processes of cellular nutrition and general pathology, and (3) the inescapable vagaries of individual metabolism.

Most medical scientists tend to neglect or ignore these time consuming subjects. I know, because at every opportunity that came my way during the past thirty years and more, I have invited them to pay more attention to these vital insights into the causes of alcoholism and the means available to prevent it from ever developing.

I again extend that invitation. In the pages that follow, I present new material clarifying the deeper meaning of metabolism, how alcoholism promotes general cell sickness (cytopathy), a new suggested strategy for the conduct of medical research, and a critical review and evaluation of the alcoholism research carried on in various parts of the world. With this material in mind my readers will want to join their voices with my own in demanding a more constructive approach to the prevention of alcoholism at the individual, national, and international levels.

My credentials on which the writing of this book is based include the fact that I have discovered some of the important vitamins which are essential to alcohol metabolism, have paid a great deal of attention to the complexities of metabolism in human bodies, and have written the only published book dealing with biochemical individuality, the vital basis upon which the existence of the disease, alcoholism, rests. Other writers on the subject of alcoholism have their own valid credentials but none of their credentials are in any sense similar to mine.

As a result of my particular background I have an excellent picture of the scenario of what happens metabolically when an individual becomes an alcoholic. My strategy is to prevent the events which are preliminary to alcoholism from taking place. The ful1 details of how alcoholism develops in an individual case are necessarily distinctive in each instance, and science has not progressed to the point where anyone knows fully what these details are. The nature of the general picture, however, is such that I feel certain that we now know scientifically how to prevent alcoholism and what remains is to get people informed and motivated to avoid the pitfalls.

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