ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 14, 1996 TAG: 9603150003
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: Associated Press
Poor white men from the inner city are more likely to become alcoholics than college graduates, but tend to recover at a higher rate if they survive, according to a new study.
The study, which spanned 50 years, is believed to be the longest to track the lives and drinking of alcohol abusers, researchers said.
``A major reason people stop drinking is they hit bottom,'' said the author, Dr. George E. Vaillant of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
``If you're poor and underprivileged ... and you have really bad alcoholism, you have quite a good chance of recovery.''
The average age at onset of alcohol abuse was a decade later for the college men than it was for the inner city men. And alcoholism exacted a heavier toll on abusers from the city: 25 percent were dead by age 60, while only 15 percent of the college-educated abusers were dead by that age.
Vaillant's findings are published in the March issue of the American Medical Association's Archives of General Psychiatry.
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