Abstract

Drinking is entrenched among Korean people as a traditional token of friendship. Diverse problems with drinking can proceed, uninhibited and unnoticed, to alcoholism. There is no way to predict how severe an alcoholism may be, but in general it is proportional to the quantity and duration that an individual has been drinking. Those aspects of drinking, however, are not considered to be essential components for diagnosing drinkers as having substance use disorders based on DSM-IV criteria. The clinicians dealing with physical and behavioral consequences from habitual drinking usually face frequent withdrawals before completing a course of treatment even in the established relationship. To avoid the higher rate of drop-outs, it can be advisable to address alcohol problems for their side. To reduce denial and foster relationship, socially stable chronic drinkers can be viewed as those with chronic stress disorders. In our culture-bound context, the end point of managing alcoholism can be directed to controlled drinking to some extent. Its success, then, can be attributed to the competence for control over drinking and another parade of addictive phenomena associated with life style diseases. (Korean J Str Res 2007;15:307∼313)

• Keywords: Alcoholism, Stress, Denial;