(1251)Alcoholic genes

I remember my first host family whom I spent the first Christmas holidays and part of the first summer with. Papa Ellison was adopted. There was no details of his forebear's medical background. The second generation were five girls, all of them happily married. My friend from college is the elder daughter with one brother from the youngest girl. Like her grandma and mum, she married young. After her marriage to her high school sweetheart, she transferred to a state university.

Years later I visited her and her husband in Raleigh. She has adopted a Korean boy, a biracial boy and then a Korean girl. Catching up with the post college years, she related how her brother drank to excess and dropped out of college. He drifted from one job to the next, finally settled in selling cars and made Florida his home. By that time it was widely known that there was a set of genes that are prone to alcoholism. People could go for generations without suffering from alcoholism provided they abstain. Nobody else in the entire clan drink to excess. Strictly speaking, most of them don't drink, period. Maybe it is upbringing, perhaps you call it family culture or it is Christian abstinence. All six families are church going right up to that time, somewhat like what most people call the American dream.

In my own family, I have a cousin on my mother side who drinks. We heard about his Saturday late night vomiting. Yet it was totally incongruent with the fact that he is an official quite high up in the district hospital. His first marriage failed.The first wife did not remarry after more than 10 years. His second wife just delivered a baby girl a few months back after about four years of marriage.
I guess comparing my cousin to Steven there is a difference. My cousin could function and keep to his profession. Steven crashed a few times before he joined the AA and stayed sober, counting the days, months and hopefully years. As a clan, most of us hardly drink. every one of my maternal grandma's four biological children and one adopted girl did not drink. From my eldest aunt, her elder girl may take half a glass of wine. Her younger brother may take a can of beer. Both my second uncle's children are strict Christian non-drinkers. None of my mum's three children take to drinking. It is only from small uncle that his younger son picked up the drinking habit as a college student. The family history closely mirrored the Ellisons. After all, my grandma was adopted, she hardly knew her siblings, let alone relatives or family medical history.