Homeless alcoholics start drinking in childhood as a means to escape their social circumstances, a latest study shows.
For the study, researchers interviewed 20 homeless alcohol-dependent people. Their analysis showed that they started drinking in childhood or during adolescence. Researchers noted that 13 people surveyed had alcoholic parents. Moreover, 13 reported being abused in their childhood homes and 19 were either forced to or chose to leave their homes by the age of 18 years.
"One hundred percent of patients enrolled in the study began drinking alcohol as child, becoming alcohol-dependent shortly thereafter," said Ryan McCormack, one of the researchers, in a news release.
"For people who have homes and jobs, it is difficult to imagine the level of despair these people experience day in and day out, or the all-consuming focus on getting the next drink that overrides even the most basic human survival instinct. Most do not come to my ER voluntarily, but end up there because of public intoxication. The majority of patients in this study consistently left the hospital prior to the completion of medical care."
Researchers found that alcoholism was the primary reason for living on the street. Furthermore, all the patients had entered a detoxification program at some point in their past.
"As their capacity to envision a future diminishes, they increasingly lose motivation for personal recovery," said McCormack.
"An alcoholic is first a human being. We hypothesize that more accessible, lower-barrier, patient-centered interventions that support alcohol harm reduction and quality of life improvement can be translated into the emergency department setting and this population."
The findings were published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
