Does alcohol abuse equate to alcohol dependence?
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, your friend is not an alcoholic. It sounds like he has a binge drinking problem–which can be a path to alcoholism. The connections between brain structure and behavior are, for many behaviors, tentative at best. A bit of poking around on PubMedcame out with some interesting studies on people who are potentially “at risk” for alcoholism, using ketamine and functional MRI. But, these studies slect their test subjects based on the heavily researched discovery that alcoholism is highly heritable. Sticking your buddy into a tube and zapping his head probably isn’t g
