SFgirl I found 2 books to be very informative about alcoholism from a medical/scientific view, both books take the research and finding of the main stream medical and scientific community and pull it all together in a manner that is pretty easy to understand.
The first book is called "Under The Influence" and is the older of the 2 books, the second book is kind of a sequel top the first and is called "Beyond The Influence".
They cite one study which I found to be very interesting when one considers genetics.
In this study they first took children who had never drank whose parents were both alcoholics, they analyzed how thier livers processed alcohol and thier livers process alcohol just like an alcoholics liver.
Then they got a second test group of children where there were no known alcholics in thier family and did the same test, thier livers processed alcohol like a non-alcoholc.
They do state that these finding would lead one to beleive that alcoholism in most cases is a passed on genetic trait, but until they can identify the gene or genes they can not say with scientific certainity that it is.
This I do know, both of my grandfathers were alcoholics, my father was, I am, my brother is and my son is as well. Hmmmmm I wonder?