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Concern over those individuals who drink alcohol to excess goes back many centuries, this concern being directed at the effect alcohol has on the individual and on society. Levine (1978) pointed out that the idea of alcoholism as a progressive disease with the key symptom of ‘loss of control’ did not simply start with the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous or the publication of Jellinek's monograph. Such a concept is, in fact, at least 200 years old.
Jellinek et al. (1990) studied this question.