Stress And Alcohol Essay Research Paper In

Stress And Alcohol Essay, Research Paper

In the world today, many people have some sort of stressor pertaining to their home life or even their job. Seventy-five percent of the general population experiences at least “some stress” every two weeks (National Health Interview Survey), and half of those, experience moderate or high levels of stress during the same two-week period. Most of these individuals seek refuge in the worlds most common and legal drug, Alcohol. They also may not see it, that is, their stress may contribute to the development of alcoholism. This is because alcoholism is usually a slow process affecting the person.

Everyone has their own definition of alcoholism, yet all have one thing in common; it is a disorder. But what is the real definition of alcoholism, and why do many people become affected with this ever-growing disease. Alcoholism is a disease in which the affected individual is addicted to alcohol. One sign of an alcoholic is that they may not drink for months or even years, but when they do, they have difficulty stopping. This is the only sure sign of an alcoholic, a consistent lack of control. Many use alcohol to boost self-confidence and to relax around others. They may drink to forget problems or to relieve stress . There have been poems and scenes in plays that show that consuming alcohol is a great way to forget about the stress. The Greek poet Alcaeus suggested drinking as a way to cope with distress and even Shakespeare in a scene in his play Julius Caesar [Alcohol research and Health v23 no. 4: 1999; pg250-5]. As the alcoholism progresses, they may begin having financial, work, or family problems. An alcoholic may get drunk without planning to and make promises to limit or stop drinking, but fail. They may also lie about their drinking, sneak drinks at work or school, have blackouts, go through personality changes, or drink in the morning to cure a hangover.

Many people are especially ignorant when it comes to alcoholism and stress. They just believe that if a person drinks too much, they are alcoholics, and never even thinks to question the reason why a person drinks so heavily. We stereotype the homeless as being drunk constantly, having a bottle of alcohol wrapped in a brown paper bag. We call them bums. We also see on TV shows/talk shows, portly men looking disheveled, with old clothing sitting on a rundown couch with a beer in his trailer. And we call him a slob. But we never would think of the executive of a large corporation as an alcoholic. We never consider the fact that different types jobs may have a strong effect on the individual with its stressors, whether he s a blue-collar laborer, or a white-collar executive.

The first journal reviewed in this study of stress and Alcoholism, is by Akihito Hagihara, Kimio Tarumi, and Alan S. Miller, entitled Work stressors and alcohol consumption among white-collar workers: a signal detection approach ; 2000. Here, the researchers wanted to find the relationships between the stress a person experiences at his job and the quantity of alcohol he consumes. The researchers has to find what types of stressful jobs that impact the individual subjecting him to alcohol.

The methodology of the research started with the finding of 465 Japanese male white-collar workers at the head office of a Steel company. Only 397 of them were used because there was evidence of missing data that may interfere with the study. To the remaining subjects, a questionnaire was given to them, asking about their job position (which had four categories to describe what their position was: staff member, lower class manager, middle class manager, and higher class manager [Journal of Studies on Alcohol v 61 no3 May 2000:462-5]) at the factory, and the stressors that relate to them. Some of these stressors included by the participants were: [Journal of Studies on Alcohol v 61 no3 May 2000:462-5] feeling time pressure, work requires advance skills and sophisticated knowledge, purpose or goal of a job is not clear, and work needs to be done quickly. The research also included how much alcohol each subject consumed on weekly basis (scores of 23.29 or more are defined as heavy drinker and less than 23.29 were moderate drinkers).

After all the questionnaires were handed back, the participants were grouped then regrouped into subgroups. The primary groups were consisted on their job position (staff member, lower class manager, middle class manager, and higher class manager), of which became the best variable because once the researcher started narrowing down the groups the research became distorted since the number of subjects in the newly divide groups became too small. Also there was limitation to the study such as they could not entirely authenticate the stress measure, and they did not compare their finding of stress and alcohol consumption with other research on the same or similar topic.

Researcher found that the groups of the heaviest drinkers were made up of middle class manager, and higher-class manager of which work requires no advance skills and sophisticated knowledge. This may be the fact that they are the one s have to control what all the employees are doing and keep all financial reports on the company up to date. Mostly what they have to do are the tedious task that have to be done right away. The next group of heaviest drinkers was consisted of middle class manager