How Do Some Groups Produce More Teetotalers and Alcoholics?
Another way to put this startling finding is that better-off Americans and some ethnic groups are more likely both to drink, and yet to drink without problems, than those in other groups. Those in the higher-alcoholism groups are more wary of alcohol—they have a greater fear of drinking and more often avoid it altogether. When people in these groups do drink—including some of the same people who have striven to abstain—they are more likely to develop a drinking problem. For example, George Vaillant found not only that Irish Americans had more drinking problems than Italian Americans, but that Irish Americans believed that the only way to overcome a drinking problem was to quit drinking altogether, whereas Italian Americans who overcame a drinking problem were more likely to moderate their drinking. Vaillant summarized his findings about these ethnic differences in this way: “Irish culture see[s] the use of alcohol in terms of black or white, good or evil, drunkenness or complete abstin
