In response to several people asking about this during one of your assignments, I decided to make a post about this.
Feel free to comment on it. You can find additional posts to support or refute the information given. Or you can find more information that I did not include, such as psychological harm to the person or their loved ones, etc.
According to WebMD, "Alcoholism is a long-term (chronic) disease. It's not a weakness or a lack of willpower." I thought it was important to point out this out since there are common misconceptions about what alcoholism is.
Again, on WebMD, I found that over time, cirrhosis of the liver will occur. This is where normal liver tissue is slowly replaced with scar tissue - which will affect the proper performance of the organ. This can be a devastating illness because it is self-induced and because the effects can be widely spread.
Inability to function properly will result in lower immune system (chronic viral infections), the conversion of food to storage (and vice versa), obesity, diabetes, heart failure, fluid build up in the liver, and several other conditions.
As you can see, alcohol abuse doesn't end in just a few conditions because those immediate conditions lead to a crescendo of disorders.
I'm going to end the blog here, so you can use other resources to find more problems and to describe them.
www.cdc.gov and www.mayoclinic.com are two great resources for medical ailments.
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/alcohol-abuse/alcohol-abuse-and-dependence-topic-overview
http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/cirrhosis-liver
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