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Bipolar patients with alcoholism were compared to nonalcoholic bipolar patients on clinical and family history variables. All patients were systematically examined using a structured interview. There was no increase in the family history of alcoholism in the alcoholic/bipolar. This argues against separate transmission of alcoholism and bipolar illness in bipolar patients who meet diagnostic criteria for both bipolar illness and alcoholism. The possibility remains that alcoholism is secondary to the bipolar illness in some cases. Likewise, there is a possibility that preexisting alcoholism may, by a sequence of events, produce an induced "organic" bipolar picture.
Winokur et al. (Wed,) studied this question.