NurseWeek

Internet site launched to aid alcoholics

By Grace Tsai, PhD
Health24News
September 9, 2000


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Washington (H24N). In terms of human life, productivity and health care, alcohol abuse and its related problems cost society billions of dollars each year in the United States. Alcohol abuse is one of the nation’s main health care problems, since an estimated 5 to 10 percent of the adult population suffers from the disease.

The founder of a new Web site, AlcoholMD.com, hopes to help the 12 million American adults who are recovering alcoholics or who abuse or are dependent upon alcohol. This site is also intended to provide information to family members and health care professionals who treat alcoholics.

According to David Smith, MD, AlcoholMD.com’s editor-in-chief and founder, "AlcoholMD.com will be extremely helpful for anyone interested in, suffering from or treating alcohol abuse. Alcohol-dependent patients need access to an array of medical and psychological services to help them recover. AlcoholMD.com provides that access."

For the general public, patients and their families, the site will help answer questions such as "Do I have a drinking problem?" "Where can I go to find help?" and "What treatments are available for alcohol dependence?" Recovering alcoholics will be able to join Alcochat, a password-protected private forum to help them share their experience with others. Multiple video interviews of patients and clinicians help visitors to the site understand alcoholism as a chronic disease.

For health-care professionals the site will offer an online version of the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, The International Addictions Infoline and links to more than 100 other medical journals. Also provided is Alcopedia, a unique alcohol-specific medical encyclopedia with thousands of selected links. Researchers in the field can also click onto a clinical trials locator service, a grant locater service and a calendar of upcoming conferences.

Studies attempting to estimate the costs associated with alcohol abuse have developed four categories of costs: treatment of the medical consequences of alcoholism (i.e., short-stay hospitals, other medical conditions associated), losses in productivity by workers who abuse alcohol, loss to society because of premature deaths due to alcohol abuse (i.e. the "human capital" approach.) and costs associated with fetal alcohol syndrome. AlcoholMD.com estimates that there are more than 100,000 deaths per year in the United States related to alcohol abuse.

Researchers estimate that in 1985, $6.3 billion was needed to treat the medical consequences of alcohol, $27 billion in lost productivity, $24 billion in lost human capital and $1.6 billion in costs associated with fetal alcohol syndrome.