Excessive consumption of strong drinks
Nowadays alcoholism is a real social scourge. It ruins families, brings a lot if harm to people's health, destroys human psyche, and causes a great number of diseases.
Alcoholism is not simply a pernicious habit, but a serious disease which is very difficult to get rid of without medical assistance. It is a disputable question whether we should refer alcoholism to pernicious habits or to addiction. The main difference of drunkenness and other harmful habits lies in its essence. Harmful habits are characteristic features of a person, which don't prevent him/her from living full-fledged life. Alcoholism is another matter. It develops into an addiction and this addiction increases and aggravates with the lapse of time. It tends to develop so slowly that a person usually can't observe changes in his/her state. Today he/she is like yesterday. Nothing seems to have changed, but if to compare the changes of state on a more prolonged scale, they are more discernable, but alcoholics are unlikely to make such a deep analysis.
It is always difficult to draw a precise boundary between an excessive use of strong drinks and alcohol addiction. It is not like flu, when you wake up in the morning and understand that you have fallen ill. This disease develops unnoticeably and slowly. This fact makes it even more perfidious.
Can we blame alcoholics for their wrong way of life? This is a question of conscience. It is always easy to find fault with a person, without trying to grasp his/her problems. When we speak of these people with criticism, we simply try to escape from somebody else's troubles, because we think that we have enough troubles ourselves and have no time to consider other people's problems. We think that if we are not drunkards, then we have all rights to blame alcohol addicts for their inability to live normal life. This is a narrow-minded look. We should be thankful to God or fate for having protected us from a harmful influence from without, for peaceful and restless life, which gave us a chance to avoid serious problems which could push us to go astray and so on. Each makes his life himself, but it doesn't mean that a person should consider all his/her achievements as solely his/her own ones. This is a manifestation of arrogance. Each person should be thankful for his/her success not only to himself, but also to the goodwill of his/her fate.
Alcoholics need your support. It is always easy to criticise someone, but much nobler it is to help people.