Something that is often overlooked is ethincity. For instance, people of Irish decent can hold alcohol better than the marjority of Asian people. In Germany, beer is food, even for kids ... but they rarely act out in violent intoxication after 4 pints of beer as say, and Englishman might.
Many Koreans are allergic to alcohol altogether, as they do not have sufficient liver enzymes to break it down, and it is converted into all kinds of nasty things in their body.
There are many ways we can view alcohol, nd how it affects families and groups. But, the fact is that the act of picking up a drink and taking it as voluntary. And not doing so will not hurt a person.
There is a theory, and I am 100% serious, that circumcised infants develop an "endorphin deficiency" due to an increased production of pain receptors in their body due to the procedure. It has been statiscially shown that this group has a higher tendance to consumer opiates (heroin, or painkillers and the like) to compensate for the lack of saturation of endogenour opiods.
Is this possible? Absolutely. If we can have serotonin deficiencies that can be treated with Paxil, should we can have endorphin deficiencies.
The fact is that everyone walking on the face of the earth today has 'a disease'. Everyone. There are no exceptions.
Therefore, I only use the word when someone has a life-threatening one which requires extensive medication to sustain life.
Nobody is right or wrong in this debate, it's like arguing whether the color blue is pretty. Everyone just has their own definition of the term.
That's an excellent point, and it illustrates how the effects of alcohol are often linked to genetics more than anything else. There is probably something inherent in the genes of Anglo-Saxons that differs from the genes of Celts, which would explain why the same four pints of beer could produce dramatically different results in the German and the Englishman.