Severe alcoholism has been found in children nine to twelve years old. Take the example of one girl now nineteen years of age. She began drinking at eleven. “I drank on the way to school and kept it [liquor] in a baby bottle so I could sip it all day long,” she admits. In the United States there are an estimated 450,000 teen-age and child alcoholics.

A youth in Los Angeles, California, admitted: “I started boozing when I was 9. . . . I quit when I was 15. Why? I was dying.” He continues:

“I’d been drunk most of the time for years. The last eight months before I sought help I stayed in my darkened room except to get alcohol. I didn’t eat for weeks toward the end; just stared at the TV and drank until I passed out. My mother brought me food. I let it lie on the floor. I could hear cockroaches scrambling for it. I was weak.

“Then one day I knew I had a choice: Try to stop drinking, go insane, or die.”