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Assassination

Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by grievances, notoriety, financial, military, political or other motives. Many times governments and criminal groups order assassinations to be committed by their accomplices. Acts of assassination have been performed since ancient times. A person who carries out an assassination is called an assassin or hitman.

Etymology

Assassin comes from the Italian and French Assissini, believed to derive from the word hashshashin (حشّاشين), and shares its etymological roots with hashish ( or ; from حشيش ). It referred to a group of Nizari Ismailis known as the Order of Assassins who worked against various political targets.

Founded by Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins were active in the Near East from the 11th to the 13th centuries. The group killed members of the Abbasid, Seljuk, Fatimid, and Christian Crusader elite for political and religious reasons.

Although it is commonly believed that members of the Order of Assassins were under the influence of hashish during their killings or during their indoctrination, there is debate as to whether these claims have merit, with many Eastern writers and an increasing number of Western academics coming to believe that drug-taking was not the key feature behind the name.

The term "assassinare" (assassin) was used in Medieval Latin from the mid 13th century.

The earliest known use of the verb "to assassinate" in printed English was by Matthew Sutcliffe in A Briefe Replie to a Certaine Odious and Slanderous Libel, Lately Published by a Seditious Jesuite, a pamphlet printed in 1600, five years before it was used in Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).

Ancient to medieval times
Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics. It dates back at least as far as recorded history.

The Egyptian pharaoh Teti, of the Old Kingdom Sixth Dynasty (23rd century BCE), is thought to be the earliest known victim of assassination, though written records are scant and thus evidence is circumstantial. Two further ancient Egyptian monarchs are more explicitly recorded to have been assassinated; Amenemhat I of the Middle Kingdom Twelfth Dynasty (20th century BCE) is recorded to have been assassinated in his bed by his palace guards for reasons unknown (as related in the Instructions of Amenemhat); meanwhile contemporary judicial records relate the assassination of New Kingdom Twentieth Dynasty monarch Ramesses III in 1155 BCE as part of a failed coup attempt. Between 550 BC and 330 BC, seven Persian kings of Achaemenid Dynasty were murdered. The Art of War, a 5th-century BC Chinese military treatise mentions tactics of Assassination and its merits.

In the Old Testament, King Joash of Judah was assassinated by his own servants; Joab assassinated Absalom, King David's son; King Sennacherib of Assyria was assassinated by his own sons; and Jael assassinated Sisera.

Chanakya (c. 350–283 BC) wrote about assassinations in detail in his political treatise Arthashastra. His student Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya Empire, later made use of assassinations against some of his enemies.

Some famous assassination victims are Philip II of Macedon (336 BC), the father of Alexander the Great, and Roman dictator Julius Caesar (44 BC). Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Muslim Shia Imams hundreds of years later. Three successive Rashidun caliphs (Umar, Uthman Ibn Affan, and Ali ibn Abi Talib) were assassinated in early civil conflicts between Muslims. The practice was also well known in ancient China, as in Jing Ke's failed assassination of Qin king Ying Zheng in 227 BC. Whilst many assassinations were performed by individuals or small groups, there were also specialized units who used a collective group of people to perform more than one assassination. The earliest were the sicarii in 6 AD, who predated the Middle Eastern Assassins and Japanese shinobis by centuries.

In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare in Western Europe, but it was a recurring theme in the Eastern Roman Empire. Strangling in the bathtub was the most commonly used method. With the Renaissance, tyrannicide—or assassination for personal or political reasons—became more common again in Western Europe.

Modern history
During the 16th and 17th centuries, international lawyers began to voice condemnation of assassinations of leaders. Balthazar Ayala has been described as "the first prominent jurist to condemn the use of assassination in foreign policy". Alberico Gentili condemned assassinations in a 1598 publication where he appealed to the self-interest of leaders: (i) assassinations had adverse short-term consequences by arousing the ire of the assassinated leader's successor, and (ii) assassinations had the adverse long-term consequences of causing disorder and chaos. Hugo Grotius's works on the law of war strictly forbade assassinations, arguing that killing was only permissible on the battlefield. In the modern world, the killing of important people began to become more than a tool in power struggles between rulers themselves and was also used for political symbolism, such as in the propaganda of the deed.

In Japan, a group of assassins called the Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu killed a number of people, including Ii Naosuke who was the head of administration for the Tokugawa shogunate, during the Boshin War. Most of the assassinations in Japan were committed with bladed weaponry, a trait that was carried on into modern history. A video-record exists of the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, using a sword.

In 1895, a group of Japanese assassins killed the Korean queen (and posthumously empress) Myeongseong.

In the United States, within 100 years, four presidents—Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy—died at the hands of assassins. There have been at least 20 known attempts on U.S. presidents' lives.

In Austria, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg was carried out in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. He is blamed for igniting World War I. Reinhard Heydrich died after an attack by British-trained Czechoslovak soldiers on behalf of the Czechoslovak government in exile in Operation Anthropoid, and knowledge from decoded transmissions allowed the United States to carry out a targeted attack, killing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while he was travelling by plane.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Joseph Stalin's NKVD carried out numerous assassinations outside of the Soviet Union, such as the killings of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Fourth International secretary Rudolf Klement, Leon Trotsky, and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership in Catalonia. India's "Father of the Nation", Mahatma Gandhi, was shot to death on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse.

The African-American civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel (now the National Civil Rights Museum) in Memphis, Tennessee. Three years prior, another African-American civil rights activist, Malcolm X, was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.

Cold War and beyond

Most major powers repudiated Cold War assassination tactics, but many allege that was merely a smokescreen for political benefit and that covert and illegal training of assassins continues today, with Russia, Israel, the U.S., Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and other nations accused of engaging in such operations. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the new Islamic government of Iran began an international campaign of assassination that lasted into the 1990s. At least 162 killings in 19 countries have been linked to the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The campaign came to an end after the Mykonos restaurant assassinations because a German court publicly implicated senior members of the government and issued arrest warrants for Ali Fallahian, the head of Iranian intelligence. Evidence indicates that Fallahian's personal involvement and individual responsibility for the murders were far more pervasive than his current indictment record represents.

In India, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi (neither of whom was related to Mahatma Gandhi, who had himself been assassinated in 1948), were assassinated in 1984 and 1991 in what were linked to separatist movements in Punjab and northern Sri Lanka, respectively.

In 1994, the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira during the Rwandan Civil War sparked the Rwandan genocide.

In Israel, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995, by Yigal Amir, who opposed the Oslo Accords. In Lebanon, the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005, prompted an investigation by the United Nations. The suggestion in the resulting Mehlis report that there was involvement by Syria prompted the Cedar Revolution, which drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon.

On 2 September 2022, a 35 year old Brazilian national attempted to assassinate the then current vice-president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Fortunately for her, the assassin's gun jammed.

United States government killing of citizens
In 2010, The New York Times revealed the existence of a hit list made by the Obama administration. It included at least three Americans to be killed without any kind of court oversight and no trial, against the background of the War on Terror. Officials of the government proposed who to kill and the president decided who was going to get killed. In September 2011, American citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were assassinated in Yemen by the United States government with drone strikes. Two weeks later, Awlaki's 16-year-old son was also killed.

As a military and foreign policy doctrine

Assassination for military purposes has long been espoused: Sun Tzu, writing around 500 BC, argued in favor of using assassination in his book The Art of War. Over 2000 years later, in his book The Prince, Machiavelli also advises rulers to assassinate enemies whenever possible to prevent them from posing a threat. An army and even a nation might be based upon and around a particularly strong, canny, or charismatic leader, whose loss could paralyze the ability of both to make war.

For similar and additional reasons, assassination has also sometimes been used in the conduct of foreign policy. The costs and benefits of such actions are difficult to compute. It may not be clear whether the assassinated leader gets replaced with a more or less competent successor, whether the assassination provokes ire in the state in question, whether the assassination leads to souring domestic public opinion, and whether the assassination provokes condemnation from third-parties. One study found that perceptual biases held by leaders often negatively affect decision making in that area, and decisions to go forward with assassinations often reflect the vague hope that any successor might be better.

In both military and foreign policy assassinations, there is the risk that the target could be replaced by an even more competent leader, or that such a killing (or a failed attempt) will prompt the masses to contemn the killers and support the leader's cause more strongly. Faced with particularly brilliant leaders, that possibility has in various instances been risked, such as in the attempts to kill the Athenian Alcibiades during the Peloponnesian War. A number of additional examples from World War II show how assassination was used as a tool:
 * The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague on May 27, 1942, by the British and Czechoslovak government-in-exile. That case illustrates the difficulty of comparing the benefits of a foreign policy goal (strengthening the legitimacy and influence of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London) against the possible costs resulting from an assassination (the Lidice massacre).
 * The American interception of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's plane during World War II after his travel route had been decrypted.
 * Operation Gaff was a planned British commando raid to capture or kill the German field marshal Erwin Rommel, also known as "The Desert Fox".

Use of assassination has continued in more recent conflicts:
 * During the Vietnam War, the US engaged in the Phoenix Program to assassinate Viet Cong leaders and sympathizers. It killed between 6,000 and 41,000 people, with official "targets" of 1,800 per month.
 * With the January 3, 2020 Baghdad International Airport airstrike, the US assassinated the commander of Iran's Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani and the commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with eight other high-ranking military personnel. The assassination of the military leaders was part of escalating tensions between the US and Iran and the American-led intervention in Iraq.

As a tool of insurgents
Insurgent groups have often employed assassination as a tool to further their causes. Assassinations provide several functions for such groups: the removal of specific enemies and as propaganda tools to focus the attention of media and politics on their cause.

The Irish Republican Army guerrillas in 1919 to 1921 killed many Royal Irish Constabulary Police intelligence officers during the Irish War of Independence. Michael Collins set up a special unit, the Squad, for that purpose, which had the effect of intimidating many policemen into resigning from the force. The Squad's activities peaked with the killing of 14 British agents in Dublin on Bloody Sunday in 1920.

The tactic was used again by the Provisional IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1969–1998). Assassination of unionist politicians and activists was one of a number of methods used in the Provisional IRA campaign 1969–1997. The IRA also attempted to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by bombing the Conservative Party Conference in a Brighton hotel. Loyalist paramilitaries retaliated by killing Catholics at random and assassinating Irish nationalist politicians.

Basque separatists ETA in Spain assassinated many security and political figures since the late 1960s, notably the president of the Francoist government of Spain, Luis Carrero Blanco, 1st Duke of Carrero-Blanco Grandee of Spain, in 1973. In the early 1990s, it also began to target academics, journalists and local politicians who publicly disagreed with it.

The Red Brigades in Italy carried out assassinations of political figures and, to a lesser extent, so did the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s and the 1980s.

In the Vietnam War, communist insurgents routinely assassinated government officials and individual civilians deemed to offend or rival the revolutionary movement. Such attacks, along with widespread military activity by insurgent bands, almost brought the Ngo Dinh Diem regime to collapse before the US intervened.

Psychology
A major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that most prospective assassins spend copious amounts of time planning and preparing for their attempts. Assassinations are thus rarely "impulsive" actions.

However, about 25% of the actual attackers were found to be delusional, a figure that rose to 60% with "near-lethal approachers" (people apprehended before reaching their targets). That shows that while mental instability plays a role in many modern assassinations, the more delusional attackers are less likely to succeed in their attempts. The report also found that around two-thirds of attackers had previously been arrested, not necessarily for related offenses; 44% had a history of serious depression, and 39% had a history of substance abuse.

Modern methods
With the advent of effective ranged weaponry and later firearms, the position of an assassination target was more precarious. Bodyguards were no longer enough to deter determined killers, who no longer needed to engage directly or even to subvert the guard to kill the leader in question. Moreover, the engagement of targets at greater distances dramatically increased the chances for assassins to survive since they could quickly flee the scene. The first heads of government to be assassinated with a firearm were James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, the regent of Scotland, in 1570, and William the Silent, the Prince of Orange of the Netherlands, in 1584. Gunpowder and other explosives also allowed the use of bombs or even greater concentrations of explosives for deeds requiring a larger touch.

Explosives, especially the car bomb, become far more common in modern history, with grenades and remote-triggered land mines also used, especially in the Middle East and the Balkans; the initial attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand's life was with a grenade. With heavy weapons, the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) has become a useful tool given the popularity of armored cars (discussed below), and Israeli forces have pioneered the use of aircraft-mounted missiles, as well as the innovative use of explosive devices.

A sniper with a precision rifle is often used in fictional assassinations; however, certain pragmatic difficulties attend long-range shooting, including finding a hidden shooting position with a clear line of sight, detailed advance knowledge of the intended victim's travel plans, the ability to identify the target at long range, and the ability to score a first-round lethal hit at long range, which is usually measured in hundreds of meters. A dedicated sniper rifle is also expensive, often costing thousands of dollars because of the high level of precision machining and handfinishing required to achieve extreme accuracy.

Despite their comparative disadvantages, handguns are more easily concealable and so are much more commonly used than rifles. Of the 74 principal incidents evaluated in a major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century, 51% were undertaken by a handgun, 30% with a rifle or shotgun, 15% used knives, and 8% explosives (the use of multiple weapons/methods was reported in 16% of all cases).

In the case of state-sponsored assassination, poisoning can be more easily denied. Georgi Markov, a dissident from Bulgaria, was assassinated by ricin poisoning. A tiny pellet containing the poison was injected into his leg through a specially designed umbrella. Widespread allegations involving the Bulgarian government and the KGB have not led to any legal results. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was learned that the KGB had developed an umbrella that could inject ricin pellets into a victim, and two former KGB agents who defected stated that the agency assisted in the murder. The CIA made several attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro; many of the schemes involving poisoning his cigars. In the late 1950s, the KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky killed Ukrainian nationalist leaders Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera with a spray gun that fired a jet of poison gas from a crushed cyanide ampule, making their deaths look like heart attacks. A 2006 case in the UK concerned the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko who was given a lethal dose of radioactive polonium-210, possibly passed to him in aerosol form sprayed directly onto his food.

Targeted killing

Targeted killing is the intentional killing by a government or its agents of a civilian or "unlawful combatant" who is not in the government's custody. The target is a person asserted to be taking part in an armed conflict or terrorism, by bearing arms or otherwise, who has thereby lost the immunity from being targeted that he would otherwise have under the Third Geneva Convention. It is a different term and concept from that of "targeted violence", as used by specialists who study violence.

On the other hand, Gary D. Solis, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, in his 2010 book The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War, wrote, "Assassinations and targeted killings are very different acts." The use of the term "assassination" is opposed, as it denotes murder (unlawful killing), but the terrorists are targeted in self-defense, which is thus viewed as a killing but not a crime (justifiable homicide). Abraham D. Sofaer, former federal judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, wrote on the subject:

"When people call a targeted killing an 'assassination', they are attempting to preclude debate on the merits of the action. Assassination is widely defined as murder, and is for that reason prohibited in the United States ... U.S. officials may not kill people merely because their policies are seen as detrimental to our interests... But killings in self-defense are no more 'assassinations' in international affairs than they are murders when undertaken by our police forces against domestic killers. Targeted killings in self-defense have been authoritatively determined by the federal government to fall outside the assassination prohibition."

Author and former U.S. Army Captain Matthew J. Morgan argued that "there is a major difference between assassination and targeted killing... targeted killing [is] not synonymous with assassination. Assassination... constitutes an illegal killing." Similarly, Amos Guiora, a professor of law at the University of Utah, wrote, "Targeted killing is... not an assassination." Steve David, professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, wrote, "There are strong reasons to believe that the Israeli policy of targeted killing is not the same as assassination." Syracuse Law William Banks and GW Law Peter Raven-Hansen wrote, "Targeted killing of terrorists is... not unlawful and would not constitute assassination." Rory Miller writes: "Targeted killing... is not 'assassination. Eric Patterson and Teresa Casale wrote, "Perhaps most important is the legal distinction between targeted killing and assassination."

On the other hand, the American Civil Liberties Union also states on its website, "A program of targeted killing far from any battlefield, without charge or trial, violates the constitutional guarantee of due process. It also violates international law, under which lethal force may be used outside armed conflict zones only as a last resort to prevent imminent threats, when non-lethal means are not available. Targeting people who are suspected of terrorism for execution, far from any war zone, turns the whole world into a battlefield."

Yael Stein, the research director of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, also stated in her article "By Any Name Illegal and Immoral: Response to 'Israel's Policy of Targeted Killing:

"The argument that this policy affords the public a sense of revenge and retribution could serve to justify acts both illegal and immoral. Clearly, lawbreakers ought to be punished. Yet, no matter how horrific their deeds, as the targeting of Israeli civilians indeed is, they should be punished according to the law. David's arguments could, in principle, justify the abolition of formal legal systems altogether."

Targeted killing has become a frequent tactic of the United States and Israel in their fights against terrorism. The tactic can raise complex questions and lead to contentious disputes as to the legal basis for its application, who qualifies as an appropriate "hit list" target, and what circumstances must exist before the tactic may be used. Opinions range from people considering it a legal form of self-defense that decreases terrorism to people calling it an extrajudicial killing that lacks due process and leads to further violence. Methods used have included firing Hellfire missiles from Predator or Reaper drones (unmanned, remote-controlled planes), detonating a cell phone bomb, and long-range sniper shooting. Countries such as the US (in Pakistan and Yemen) and Israel (in the West Bank and Gaza) have used targeted killing to eliminate members of groups such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas. In early 2010, with President Obama's approval, Anwar al-Awlaki became the first US citizen to be publicly approved for targeted killing by the Central Intelligence Agency. Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in September 2011.

United Nations investigator Ben Emmerson said that US drone strikes may have violated international humanitarian law. The Intercept reported, "Between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes [in northeastern Afghanistan] killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets."

Early forms
One of the earliest forms of defense against assassins was employing bodyguards, who act as a shield for the potential target; keep a lookout for potential attackers, sometimes in advance, such as on a parade route; and putting themselves in harm's way, both by simple presence, showing that physical force is available to protect the target, and by shielding the target if any attack occurs. To neutralize an attacker, bodyguards are typically armed as much as legal and practical concerns permit.

Notable examples of bodyguards include the Roman Praetorian Guard or the Ottoman Janissaries, but in both cases, the protectors sometimes became assassins themselves, exploiting their power to make the head of state a virtual hostage or killing the very leaders whom they were supposed to protect. The loyalty of individual bodyguards is an important question as well, especially for leaders who oversee states with strong ethnic or religious divisions. Failure to realize such divided loyalties allowed the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

The bodyguard function was often executed by the leader's most loyal warriors, and it was extremely effective throughout most of early human history, which led assassins to attempt stealthy means, such as poison, whose risk was reduced by having another person taste the leader's food first.

Modern strategies
With the advent of gunpowder, ranged assassination via bombs or firearms became possible. One of the first reactions was simply to increase the guard, creating what at times might seem a small army trailing every leader. Another was to begin clearing large areas whenever a leader was present to the point that entire sections of a city might be shut down.

As the 20th century dawned, the prevalence and capability of assassins grew quickly, as did measures to protect against them. For the first time, armored cars or limousines were put into service for safer transport, with modern versions virtually invulnerable to small arms fire, smaller bombs and mines. Bulletproof vests also began to be used, but since they were of limited utility, restricting movement and leaving the head unprotected, they tended to be worn only during high-profile public events, if at all.

Access to famous people also became more and more restricted; potential visitors would be forced through numerous different checks before being granted access to the official in question, and as communication became better and information technology more prevalent, it has become all but impossible for a would-be killer to get close enough to the personage at work or in private life to effect an attempt on their life, especially with the common use of metal and bomb detectors.

Most modern assassinations have been committed either during a public performance or during transport, both because of weaker security and security lapses, such as with U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, or as part of a coup d'état in which security is either overwhelmed or completely removed, such as with Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

The methods used for protection by famous people have sometimes evoked negative reactions by the public, with some resenting the separation from their officials or major figures. One example might be traveling in a car protected by a bubble of clear bulletproof glass, such as the MRAP-like Popemobile of Pope John Paul II, built following an attempt at his life. Politicians often resent the need for separation and sometimes send their bodyguards away from them for personal or publicity reasons. US President William McKinley did so at the public reception in which he was assassinated.

Other potential targets go into seclusion and are rarely heard from or seen in public, such as writer Salman Rushdie. A related form of protection is the use of body doubles, people with similar builds to those they are expected to impersonate. These people are then made up and, in some cases, undergo plastic surgery to look like the target, with the body double then taking the place of the person in high-risk situations. According to Joe R. Reeder, Under Secretary of the Army from 1993 to 1997, Fidel Castro used body doubles.

US Secret Service protective agents receive training in the psychology of assassins.

title: Assassination


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Optical audio disc

An audio optical disc is an optical disc that stores sound information such as music or speech. It may specifically refer to:

Audio CDs

 * Compact disc (CD), an optical disc used to store digital data (700 MB storage)
 * Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA), a CD that contains PCM encoded digital audio in the original "Red Book" CD-DA format
 * 5.1 Music Disc, an extension to the Red Book standard that uses DTS Coherent Acoustics 5.1 surround sound
 * Compressed audio optical disc, an optical disc storing MP3s and other compressed audio files as data, rather than in the Red Book format

Audio DVDs

 * DVD, 4 GB single layer, 8 GB double layer storage
 * DVD-Audio, a DVD that plays audio
 * Super Audio CD (SACD), a format which competes with DVD-Audio

Audio Blu-rays

 * Blu-ray, 25 GB single layer, 50 GB double layer
 * BD-Audio, a Blu-ray disc that is capable of audio-only playback

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Alcoholism

Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated there were 283 million people with alcohol use disorders worldwide. The term alcoholism was first coined in 1852, but alcoholism and alcoholic are sometimes considered stigmatizing and to discourage seeking treatment, so diagnostic terms such as alcohol use disorder or alcohol dependence are often used instead in a clinical context.

Alcohol is addictive, and heavy long-term alcohol use results in many negative health and social consequences. It can damage all the organ systems, but especially affects the brain, heart, liver, pancreas and immune system. Heavy alcohol usage can result in trouble sleeping, and severe cognitive issues like dementia, brain damage, or Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome. Physical effects include irregular heartbeat, an impaired immune response, liver cirrhosis, increased cancer risk, and severe withdrawal symptoms if stopped suddenly. These health effects can reduce life expectancy by 10 years. Drinking during pregnancy may harm the child's health, and drunk driving increases the risk of traffic accidents. Alcoholism is also associated with increases in violent and non-violent crime. While alcoholism directly resulted in 139,000 deaths worldwide in 2013, in 2012 3.3 million deaths may be attributable globally to alcohol.

The development of alcoholism is attributed to both environment and genetics equally. The use of alcohol to self-medicate stress or anxiety can turn into alcoholism. Someone with a parent or sibling with an alcohol use disorder is three to four times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder themselves, but only a minority of them do. Environmental factors include social, cultural and behavioral influences. High stress levels and anxiety, as well as alcohol's inexpensive cost and easy accessibility, increase the risk. People may continue to drink partly to prevent or improve symptoms of withdrawal. After a person stops drinking alcohol, they may experience a low level of withdrawal lasting for months. Medically, alcoholism is considered both a physical and mental illness. Questionnaires are usually used to detect possible alcoholism. Further information is then collected to confirm the diagnosis.

Treatment of alcoholism may take several forms. Due to medical problems that can occur during withdrawal, alcohol cessation should be controlled carefully. One common method involves the use of benzodiazepine medications, such as diazepam. These can be taken while admitted to a health care institution or individually. The medications acamprosate or disulfiram may also be used to help prevent further drinking. Mental illness or other addictions may complicate treatment. Various individual or group therapy or support groups are used to attempt to keep a person from returning to alcoholism. Among them is the abstinence based mutual aid fellowship Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). A 2020 scientific review found that clinical interventions encouraging increased participation in AA (AA/twelve step facilitation (AA/TSF))—resulted in higher abstinence rates over other clinical interventions, and most studies in the review found that AA/TSF led to lower health costs.

Many terms, some slurs and some informal, have been used to refer to people affected by alcoholism such as tippler, drunkard, dipsomaniac and souse.

Signs and symptoms
The risk of alcohol dependence begins at low levels of drinking and increases directly with both the volume of alcohol consumed and a pattern of drinking larger amounts on an occasion, to the point of intoxication, which is sometimes called binge drinking. Binge drinking is the most common pattern of alcoholism. It has different definitions and one of this defines it as a pattern of drinking when a male has five or more drinks on an occasion or a female has at least four drinks on an occasion.

Long-term misuse
Alcoholism is characterized by an increased tolerance to alcohol – which means that an individual can consume more alcohol – and physical dependence on alcohol, which makes it hard for an individual to control their consumption. The physical dependency caused by alcohol can lead to an affected individual having a very strong urge to drink alcohol. These characteristics play a role in decreasing the ability to stop drinking of an individual with an alcohol use disorder. Alcoholism can have adverse effects on mental health, contributing to psychiatric disorders and increasing the risk of suicide. A depressed mood is a common symptom of heavy alcohol drinkers.

Warning signs
Warning signs of alcoholism include the consumption of increasing amounts of alcohol and frequent intoxication, preoccupation with drinking to the exclusion of other activities, promises to quit drinking and failure to keep those promises, the inability to remember what was said or done while drinking (colloquially known as "blackouts"), personality changes associated with drinking, denial or the making of excuses for drinking, the refusal to admit excessive drinking, dysfunction or other problems at work or school, the loss of interest in personal appearance or hygiene, marital and economic problems, and the complaint of poor health, with loss of appetite, respiratory infections, or increased anxiety.

Short-term effects
Drinking enough to cause a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.03–0.12% typically causes an overall improvement in mood and possible euphoria (intense feelings of well-being and happiness), increased self-confidence and sociability, decreased anxiety, a flushed, red appearance in the face and impaired judgment and fine muscle coordination. A BAC of 0.09% to 0.25% causes lethargy, sedation, balance problems and blurred vision. A BAC of 0.18% to 0.30% causes profound confusion, impaired speech (e.g. slurred speech), staggering, dizziness and vomiting. A BAC from 0.25% to 0.40% causes stupor, unconsciousness, anterograde amnesia, vomiting (death may occur due to inhalation of vomit while unconscious) and respiratory depression (potentially life-threatening). A BAC from 0.35% to 0.80% causes a coma (unconsciousness), life-threatening respiratory depression and possibly fatal alcohol poisoning. With all alcoholic beverages, drinking while driving, operating an aircraft or heavy machinery increases the risk of an accident; many countries have penalties for drunk driving.

Long-term effects
Having more than one drink a day for women or two drinks for men increases the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, and stroke. Risk is greater with binge drinking, which may also result in violence or accidents. About 3.3 million deaths (5.9% of all deaths) are believed to be due to alcohol each year. Alcoholism reduces a person's life expectancy by around ten years and alcohol use is the third leading cause of early death in the United States. Long-term alcohol misuse can cause a number of physical symptoms, including cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, epilepsy, polyneuropathy, alcoholic dementia, heart disease, nutritional deficiencies, peptic ulcers and sexual dysfunction, and can eventually be fatal. Other physical effects include an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, malabsorption, alcoholic liver disease, and several cancers such as breast cancer and head and neck cancer. Damage to the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system can occur from sustained alcohol consumption. A wide range of immunologic defects can result and there may be a generalized skeletal fragility, in addition to a recognized tendency to accidental injury, resulting in a propensity for bone fractures.

Women develop long-term complications of alcohol dependence more rapidly than do men, women also have a higher mortality rate from alcoholism than men. Examples of long-term complications include brain, heart, and liver damage and an increased risk of breast cancer. Additionally, heavy drinking over time has been found to have a negative effect on reproductive functioning in women. This results in reproductive dysfunction such as anovulation, decreased ovarian mass, problems or irregularity of the menstrual cycle, and early menopause. Alcoholic ketoacidosis can occur in individuals who chronically misuse alcohol and have a recent history of binge drinking. The amount of alcohol that can be biologically processed and its effects differ between sexes. Equal dosages of alcohol consumed by men and women generally result in women having higher blood alcohol concentrations (BACs), since women generally have a lower weight and higher percentage of body fat and therefore a lower volume of distribution for alcohol than men.

Psychiatric
Long-term misuse of alcohol can cause a wide range of mental health problems. Severe cognitive problems are common; approximately 10% of all dementia cases are related to alcohol consumption, making it the second leading cause of dementia. Excessive alcohol use causes damage to brain function, and psychological health can be increasingly affected over time. Social skills are significantly impaired in people with alcoholism due to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol on the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex area of the brain. The social skills that are impaired by alcohol use disorder include impairments in perceiving facial emotions, prosody, perception problems, and theory of mind deficits; the ability to understand humor is also impaired in people who misuse alcohol. Psychiatric disorders are common in people with alcohol use disorders, with as many as 25% also having severe psychiatric disturbances. The most prevalent psychiatric symptoms are anxiety and depression disorders. Psychiatric symptoms usually initially worsen during alcohol withdrawal, but typically improve or disappear with continued abstinence. Psychosis, confusion, and organic brain syndrome may be caused by alcohol misuse, which can lead to a misdiagnosis such as schizophrenia. Panic disorder can develop or worsen as a direct result of long-term alcohol misuse.

The co-occurrence of major depressive disorder and alcoholism is well documented. Among those with comorbid occurrences, a distinction is commonly made between depressive episodes that remit with alcohol abstinence ("substance-induced"), and depressive episodes that are primary and do not remit with abstinence ("independent" episodes). Additional use of other drugs may increase the risk of depression. Psychiatric disorders differ depending on gender. Women who have alcohol-use disorders often have a co-occurring psychiatric diagnosis such as major depression, anxiety, panic disorder, bulimia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or borderline personality disorder. Men with alcohol-use disorders more often have a co-occurring diagnosis of narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, impulse disorders or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Women with alcohol use disorder are more likely to experience physical or sexual assault, abuse, and domestic violence than women in the general population, which can lead to higher instances of psychiatric disorders and greater dependence on alcohol.

Social effects
Serious social problems arise from alcohol use disorder; these dilemmas are caused by the pathological changes in the brain and the intoxicating effects of alcohol. Alcohol misuse is associated with an increased risk of committing criminal offences, including child abuse, domestic violence, rape, burglary and assault. Alcoholism is associated with loss of employment, which can lead to financial problems. Drinking at inappropriate times and behavior caused by reduced judgment can lead to legal consequences, such as criminal charges for drunk driving or public disorder, or civil penalties for tortious behavior. An alcoholic's behavior and mental impairment while drunk can profoundly affect those surrounding him and lead to isolation from family and friends. This isolation can lead to marital conflict and divorce, or contribute to domestic violence. Alcoholism can also lead to child neglect, with subsequent lasting damage to the emotional development of children of people with alcohol use disorders. For this reason, children of people with alcohol use disorders can develop a number of emotional problems. For example, they can become afraid of their parents, because of their unstable mood behaviors. They may develop shame over their inadequacy to liberate their parents from alcoholism and, as a result of this, may develop self-image problems, which can lead to depression.

Alcohol withdrawal

As with similar substances with a sedative-hypnotic mechanism, such as barbiturates and benzodiazepines, withdrawal from alcohol dependence can be fatal if it is not properly managed. Alcohol's primary effect is the increase in stimulation of the GABAA receptor, promoting central nervous system depression. With repeated heavy consumption of alcohol, these receptors are desensitized and reduced in number, resulting in tolerance and physical dependence. When alcohol consumption is stopped too abruptly, the person's nervous system experiences uncontrolled synapse firing. This can result in symptoms that include anxiety, life-threatening seizures, delirium tremens, hallucinations, shakes and possible heart failure. Other neurotransmitter systems are also involved, especially dopamine, NMDA and glutamate.

Severe acute withdrawal symptoms such as delirium tremens and seizures rarely occur after 1-week post cessation of alcohol. The acute withdrawal phase can be defined as lasting between one and three weeks. In the period of 3–6 weeks following cessation, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and sleep disturbance are common. Similar post-acute withdrawal symptoms have also been observed in animal models of alcohol dependence and withdrawal.

A kindling effect also occurs in people with alcohol use disorders whereby each subsequent withdrawal syndrome is more severe than the previous withdrawal episode; this is due to neuroadaptations which occur as a result of periods of abstinence followed by re-exposure to alcohol. Individuals who have had multiple withdrawal episodes are more likely to develop seizures and experience more severe anxiety during withdrawal from alcohol than alcohol-dependent individuals without a history of past alcohol withdrawal episodes. The kindling effect leads to persistent functional changes in brain neural circuits as well as to gene expression. Kindling also results in the intensification of psychological symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. There are decision tools and questionnaires that help guide physicians in evaluating alcohol withdrawal. For example, the CIWA-Ar objectifies alcohol withdrawal symptoms in order to guide therapy decisions which allows for an efficient interview while at the same time retaining clinical usefulness, validity, and reliability, ensuring proper care for withdrawal patients, who can be in danger of death.

Causes
A complex combination of genetic and environmental factors influences the risk of the development of alcoholism. Genes that influence the metabolism of alcohol also influence the risk of alcoholism, as can a family history of alcoholism. There is compelling evidence that alcohol use at an early age may influence the expression of genes which increase the risk of alcohol dependence. These genetic and epigenetic results are regarded as consistent with large longitudinal population studies finding that the younger the age of drinking onset, the greater the prevalence of lifetime alcohol dependence.

Severe childhood trauma is also associated with a general increase in the risk of drug dependency. Lack of peer and family support is associated with an increased risk of alcoholism developing. Genetics and adolescence are associated with an increased sensitivity to the neurotoxic effects of chronic alcohol misuse. Cortical degeneration due to the neurotoxic effects increases impulsive behaviour, which may contribute to the development, persistence and severity of alcohol use disorders. There is evidence that with abstinence, there is a reversal of at least some of the alcohol induced central nervous system damage. The use of cannabis was associated with later problems with alcohol use. Alcohol use was associated with an increased probability of later use of tobacco and illegal drugs such as cannabis.

Availability
Alcohol is the most available, widely consumed, and widely misused recreational drug. Beer alone is the world's most widely consumed alcoholic beverage; it is the third-most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is thought by some to be the oldest fermented beverage.

Gender difference
Based on combined data in the US from SAMHSA's 2004–2005 National Surveys on Drug Use & Health, the rate of past-year alcohol dependence or misuse among persons aged 12 or older varied by level of alcohol use: 44.7% of past month heavy drinkers, 18.5% binge drinkers, 3.8% past month non-binge drinkers, and 1.3% of those who did not drink alcohol in the past month met the criteria for alcohol dependence or misuse in the past year. Males had higher rates than females for all measures of drinking in the past month: any alcohol use (57.5% vs. 45%), binge drinking (30.8% vs. 15.1%), and heavy alcohol use (10.5% vs. 3.3%), and males were twice as likely as females to have met the criteria for alcohol dependence or misuse in the past year (10.5% vs. 5.1%). However, because females generally weigh less than males, have more fat and less water in their bodies, and metabolize less alcohol in their esophagus and stomach, they are likely to develop higher blood alcohol levels per drink. Women may also be more vulnerable to liver disease.

Genetic variation
There are genetic variations that affect the risk for alcoholism. Some of these variations are more common in individuals with ancestry from certain areas; for example, Africa, East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The variants with strongest effect are in genes that encode the main enzymes of alcohol metabolism, ADH1B and ALDH2. These genetic factors influence the rate at which alcohol and its initial metabolic product, acetaldehyde, are metabolized. They are found at different frequencies in people from different parts of the world. The alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH1B*2 causes a more rapid metabolism of alcohol to acetaldehyde, and reduces risk for alcoholism; it is most common in individuals from East Asia and the Middle East. The alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH1B*3 also causes a more rapid metabolism of alcohol. The allele ADH1B*3 is only found in some individuals of African descent and certain Native American tribes. African Americans and Native Americans with this allele have a reduced risk of developing alcoholism. Native Americans, however, have a significantly higher rate of alcoholism than average; risk factors such as cultural environmental effects (e.g. trauma) have been proposed to explain the higher rates. The aldehyde dehydrogenase allele ALDH2*2 greatly reduces the rate at which acetaldehyde, the initial product of alcohol metabolism, is removed by conversion to acetate; it greatly reduces the risk for alcoholism.

A genome-wide association study (GWAS) of more than 100,000 human individuals identified variants of the gene KLB, which encodes the transmembrane protein β-Klotho, as highly associated with alcohol consumption. The protein β-Klotho is an essential element in cell surface receptors for hormones involved in modulation of appetites for simple sugars and alcohol. Several large GWAS have found differences in the genetics of alcohol consumption and alcohol dependence, although the two are to some degree related.

DNA damage
Alcohol-induced DNA damage, when not properly repaired, may have a key role in the neurotoxicity induced by alcohol. Metabolic conversion of ethanol to acetaldehyde can occur in the brain and the neurotoxic effects of ethanol appear to be associated with acetaldehyde induced DNA damages including DNA adducts and crosslinks. In addition to acetaldehyde, alcohol metabolism produces potentially genotoxic reactive oxygen species, which have been demonstrated to cause oxidative DNA damage.

Definition
Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word alcoholism, it is not a recognized diagnosis, and the use of the term alcoholism is discouraged due to its heavily stigmatized connotations. It is classified as alcohol use disorder in the DSM-5 or alcohol dependence in the ICD-11. In 1979, the World Health Organization discouraged the use of alcoholism due to its inexact meaning, preferring alcohol dependence syndrome.

Misuse, problem use, abuse, and heavy use of alcohol refer to improper use of alcohol, which may cause physical, social, or moral harm to the drinker. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, issued by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2005, defines "moderate use" as no more than two alcoholic beverages a day for men and no more than one alcoholic beverage a day for women. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines binge drinking as the amount of alcohol leading to a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.08, which, for most adults, would be reached by consuming five drinks for men or four for women over a two-hour period. According to the NIAAA, men may be at risk for alcohol-related problems if their alcohol consumption exceeds 14 standard drinks per week or 4 drinks per day, and women may be at risk if they have more than 7 standard drinks per week or 3 drinks per day. It defines a standard drink as one 12-ounce bottle of beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. Despite this risk, a 2014 report in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that only 10% of either "heavy drinkers" or "binge drinkers" defined according to the above criteria also met the criteria for alcohol dependence, while only 1.3% of non-binge drinkers met the criteria. An inference drawn from this study is that evidence-based policy strategies and clinical preventive services may effectively reduce binge drinking without requiring addiction treatment in most cases.

Alcoholism
The term alcoholism is commonly used amongst laypeople, but the word is poorly defined. Despite the imprecision inherent in the term, there have been attempts to define how the word alcoholism should be interpreted when encountered. In 1992, it was defined by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) and ASAM as "a primary, chronic disease characterized by impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking." MeSH has had an entry for alcoholism since 1999, and references the 1992 definition.

The WHO calls alcoholism "a term of long-standing use and variable meaning", and use of the term was disfavored by a 1979 WHO expert committee.

In professional and research contexts, the term alcoholism is not currently favored, but rather alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, or alcohol use disorder are used. Talbot (1989) observes that alcoholism in the classical disease model follows a progressive course: if people continue to drink, their condition will worsen. This will lead to harmful consequences in their lives, physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. Johnson (1980) proposed that the emotional progression of the addicted people's response to alcohol has four phases. The first two are considered "normal" drinking and the last two are viewed as "typical" alcoholic drinking. Johnson's four phases consist of:
 * 1) Learning the mood swing. People are introduced to alcohol (in some cultures this can happen at a relatively young age), and they enjoy the happy feeling it produces. At this stage, there is no emotional cost.
 * 2) Seeking the mood swing. People will drink to regain that happy feeling in phase 1; the drinking will increase as more alcohol is required to achieve the same effect. Again at this stage, there are no significant consequences.
 * 3) At the third stage there are physical and social consequences such as hangovers, family problems, and work problems. People will continue to drink excessively, disregarding the problems.
 * 4) The fourth stage can be detrimental with a risk for premature death. People in this phase now drink to feel normal, they block out the feelings of overwhelming guilt, remorse, anxiety, and shame they experience when sober.

DSM and ICD
In the United States, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the most common diagnostic guide for substance use disorders, whereas most countries use the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) for diagnostic (and other) purposes. The two manuals use similar but not identical nomenclature to classify alcohol problems.

Social barriers
Attitudes and social stereotypes can create barriers to the detection and treatment of alcohol use disorder. This is more of a barrier for women than men. Fear of stigmatization may lead women to deny that they have a medical condition, to hide their drinking, and to drink alone. This pattern, in turn, leads family, physicians, and others to be less likely to suspect that a woman they know has alcohol use disorder. In contrast, reduced fear of stigma may lead men to admit that they are having a medical condition, to display their drinking publicly, and to drink in groups. This pattern, in turn, leads family, physicians, and others to be more likely to suspect that a man they know is someone with an alcohol use disorder.

Screening
Screening is recommended among those over the age of 18. Several tools may be used to detect a loss of control of alcohol use. These tools are mostly self-reports in questionnaire form. Another common theme is a score or tally that sums up the general severity of alcohol use.

The CAGE questionnaire, named for its four questions, is one such example that may be used to screen patients quickly in a doctor's office.

"Two 'yes' responses indicate that the respondent should be investigated further.

The questionnaire asks the following questions:

 * 1) Have you ever felt you needed to cut down on your drinking?
 * 2) Have people annoyed you by criticizing your drinking?
 * 3) Have you ever felt guilty about drinking?
 * 4) Have you ever felt you needed a drink first thing in the morning (eye-opener) to steady your nerves or to get rid of a hangover?"

 * The CAGE questionnaire has demonstrated a high effectiveness in detecting alcohol-related problems; however, it has limitations in people with less severe alcohol-related problems, white women and college students.

Other tests are sometimes used for the detection of alcohol dependence, such as the Alcohol Dependence Data Questionnaire, which is a more sensitive diagnostic test than the CAGE questionnaire. It helps distinguish a diagnosis of alcohol dependence from one of heavy alcohol use. The Michigan Alcohol Screening Test (MAST) is a screening tool for alcoholism widely used by courts to determine the appropriate sentencing for people convicted of alcohol-related offenses, driving under the influence being the most common. The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), a screening questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization, is unique in that it has been validated in six countries and is used internationally. Like the CAGE questionnaire, it uses a simple set of questions – a high score earning a deeper investigation. The Paddington Alcohol Test (PAT) was designed to screen for alcohol-related problems amongst those attending Accident and Emergency departments. It concords well with the AUDIT questionnaire but is administered in a fifth of the time.

Urine and blood tests
There are reliable tests for the actual use of alcohol, one common test being that of blood alcohol content (BAC). These tests do not differentiate people with alcohol use disorders from people without; however, long-term heavy drinking does have a few recognizable effects on the body, including:
 * Macrocytosis (enlarged MCV)
 * Elevated GGT
 * Moderate elevation of AST and ALT and an AST: ALT ratio of 2:1
 * High carbohydrate deficient transferrin (CDT)

With regard to alcoholism, BAC is useful to judge alcohol tolerance, which in turn is a sign of alcoholism. Electrolyte and acid-base abnormalities including hypokalemia, hypomagnesemia, hyponatremia, hyperuricemia, metabolic acidosis, and respiratory alkalosis are common in people with alcohol use disorders.

However, none of these blood tests for biological markers is as sensitive as screening questionnaires.

Prevention
The World Health Organization, the European Union and other regional bodies, national governments and parliaments have formed alcohol policies in order to reduce the harm of alcoholism.

Increasing the age at which alcohol can be purchased, and banning or restricting alcohol beverage advertising are common methods to reduce alcohol use among adolescents and young adults in particular. Another common method of alcoholism prevention is taxation of alcohol products – increasing price of alcohol by 10% is linked with reduction of consumption of up to 10%.

Credible, evidence-based educational campaigns in the mass media about the consequences of alcohol misuse have been recommended. Guidelines for parents to prevent alcohol misuse amongst adolescents, and for helping young people with mental health problems have also been suggested.

Because alcohol is often used for self-medication of conditions like anxiety temporarily, prevention of alcoholism may be attempted by reducing the severity or prevalence of stress and anxiety in individuals.

Management
Treatments are varied because there are multiple perspectives of alcoholism. Those who approach alcoholism as a medical condition or disease recommend differing treatments from, for instance, those who approach the condition as one of social choice. Most treatments focus on helping people discontinue their alcohol intake, followed up with life training and/or social support to help them resist a return to alcohol use. Since alcoholism involves multiple factors which encourage a person to continue drinking, they must all be addressed to successfully prevent a relapse. An example of this kind of treatment is detoxification followed by a combination of supportive therapy, attendance at self-help groups, and ongoing development of coping mechanisms. Much of the treatment community for alcoholism supports an abstinence-based zero tolerance approach popularized by the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous; however, some prefer a harm-reduction approach.

Cessation of alcohol intake
Medical treatment for alcohol detoxification usually involves administration of a benzodiazepine, in order to ameliorate alcohol withdrawal syndrome's adverse impact. The addition of phenobarbital improves outcomes if benzodiazepine administration lacks the usual efficacy, and phenobarbital alone might be an effective treatment. Propofol also might enhance treatment for individuals showing limited therapeutic response to a benzodiazepine. Individuals who are only at risk of mild to moderate withdrawal symptoms can be treated as outpatients. Individuals at risk of a severe withdrawal syndrome as well as those who have significant or acute comorbid conditions can be treated as inpatients. Direct treatment can be followed by a treatment program for alcohol dependence or alcohol use disorder to attempt to reduce the risk of relapse. Experiences following alcohol withdrawal, such as depressed mood and anxiety, can take weeks or months to abate while other symptoms persist longer due to persisting neuroadaptations.

Psychological

Various forms of group therapy or psychotherapy are sometimes used to encourage and support abstinence from alcohol, or to reduce alcohol consumption to levels that are not associated with adverse outcomes. Mutual-aid group-counseling is an approach used to facilitate relapse prevention. Alcoholics Anonymous was one of the earliest organizations formed to provide mutual peer support and non-professional counseling, however the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous is disputed. A 2020 Cochrane review concluded that Twelve-Step Facilitation (TSF) probably achieves outcomes such as fewer drinks per drinking day, however evidence for such a conclusion comes from low to moderate certainty evidence "so should be regarded with caution". Others include LifeRing Secular Recovery, SMART Recovery, Women for Sobriety, and Secular Organizations for Sobriety.

Manualized Twelve Step Facilitation (TSF) interventions (i.e. therapy which encourages active, long-term Alcoholics Anonymous participation) for Alcohol Use Disorder lead to higher abstinence rates, compared to other clinical interventions and to wait-list control groups.

Moderate drinking
Moderate drinking amongst people with alcohol dependence—often termed 'controlled drinking'—has been subject to significant controversy. Indeed, much of the skepticism toward the viability of moderate drinking goals stems from historical ideas about 'alcoholism', now replaced with 'alcohol use disorder' or alcohol dependence in most scientific contexts. A 2021 meta-analysis and systematic review of controlled drinking covering 22 studies concluded controlled drinking was a 'non-inferior' outcome to abstinence for many drinkers.

Rationing and moderation programs such as Moderation Management and DrinkWise do not mandate complete abstinence. While most people with alcohol use disorders are unable to limit their drinking in this way, some return to moderate drinking. A 2002 US study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) showed that 17.7% of individuals diagnosed as alcohol dependent more than one year prior returned to low-risk drinking. This group, however, showed fewer initial symptoms of dependency.

A follow-up study, using the same subjects that were judged to be in remission in 2001–2002, examined the rates of return to problem drinking in 2004–2005. The study found abstinence from alcohol was the most stable form of remission for recovering alcoholics. There was also a 1973 study showing chronic alcoholics drinking moderately again, but a 1982 follow-up showed that 95% of subjects were not able to maintain drinking in moderation over the long term. Another study was a long-term (60 year) follow-up of two groups of alcoholic men which concluded that "return to controlled drinking rarely persisted for much more than a decade without relapse or evolution into abstinence." Internet based measures appear to be useful at least in the short term.

Medications
In the United States there are four approved medications for alcoholism: acamprosate, two methods of using naltrexone and disulfiram.
 * Acamprosate may stabilise the brain chemistry that is altered due to alcohol dependence via antagonising the actions of glutamate, a neurotransmitter which is hyperactive in the post-withdrawal phase. By reducing excessive NMDA activity which occurs at the onset of alcohol withdrawal, acamprosate can reduce or prevent alcohol withdrawal related neurotoxicity. Acamprosate reduces the risk of relapse amongst alcohol-dependent persons.
 * Naltrexone is a competitive antagonist for opioid receptors, effectively blocking the effects of endorphins and opioids. Naltrexone is used to decrease cravings for alcohol and encourage abstinence. Alcohol causes the body to release endorphins, which in turn release dopamine and activate the reward pathways; hence in the body Naltrexone reduces the pleasurable effects from consuming alcohol. Evidence supports a reduced risk of relapse among alcohol-dependent persons and a decrease in excessive drinking. Nalmefene also appears effective and works in a similar manner.
 * Disulfiram prevents the elimination of acetaldehyde, a chemical the body produces when breaking down ethanol. Acetaldehyde itself is the cause of many hangover symptoms from alcohol use. The overall effect is discomfort when alcohol is ingested: an extremely rapid and long-lasting, uncomfortable hangover.

Several other drugs are also used and many are under investigation.
 * Benzodiazepines, while useful in the management of acute alcohol withdrawal, if used long-term can cause a worse outcome in alcoholism. Alcoholics on chronic benzodiazepines have a lower rate of achieving abstinence from alcohol than those not taking benzodiazepines. This class of drugs is commonly prescribed to alcoholics for insomnia or anxiety management. Initiating prescriptions of benzodiazepines or sedative-hypnotics in individuals in recovery has a high rate of relapse with one author reporting more than a quarter of people relapsed after being prescribed sedative-hypnotics. Those who are long-term users of benzodiazepines should not be withdrawn rapidly, as severe anxiety and panic may develop, which are known risk factors for alcohol use disorder relapse. Taper regimes of 6–12 months have been found to be the most successful, with reduced intensity of withdrawal.
 * Calcium carbimide works in the same way as disulfiram; it has an advantage in that the occasional adverse effects of disulfiram, hepatotoxicity and drowsiness, do not occur with calcium carbimide.
 * Ondansetron and topiramate are supported by tentative evidence in people with certain genetic patterns. Evidence for ondansetron is stronger in people who have recently started to abuse alcohol. Topiramate is a derivative of the naturally occurring sugar monosaccharide D-fructose. Review articles characterize topiramate as showing "encouraging", "promising", "efficacious", and "insufficient" results in the treatment of alcohol use disorders.

Evidence does not support the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), antipsychotics, or gabapentin.

Research
Topiramate, a derivative of the naturally occurring sugar monosaccharide D-fructose, has been found effective in helping alcoholics quit or cut back on the amount they drink. Evidence suggests that topiramate antagonizes excitatory glutamate receptors, inhibits dopamine release, and enhances inhibitory gamma-aminobutyric acid function. A 2008 review of the effectiveness of topiramate concluded that the results of published trials are promising, however as of 2008, data was insufficient to support using topiramate in conjunction with brief weekly compliance counseling as a first-line agent for alcohol dependence. A 2010 review found that topiramate may be superior to existing alcohol pharmacotherapeutic options. Topiramate effectively reduces craving and alcohol withdrawal severity as well as improving quality-of-life-ratings.

Baclofen, a GABAB receptor agonist, is under study for the treatment of alcoholism. According to a 2017 Cochrane Systematic Review, there is insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness or safety for the use of baclofen for withdrawal symptoms in alcoholism. Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy is under study for the treatment of patients with alcohol use disorder.

Dual addictions and dependencies
Alcoholics may also require treatment for other psychotropic drug addictions and drug dependencies. The most common dual dependence syndrome with alcohol dependence is benzodiazepine dependence, with studies showing 10–20% of alcohol-dependent individuals had problems of dependence and/or misuse problems of benzodiazepine drugs such as diazepam or clonazepam. These drugs are, like alcohol, depressants. Benzodiazepines may be used legally, if they are prescribed by doctors for anxiety problems or other mood disorders, or they may be purchased as illegal drugs. Benzodiazepine use increases cravings for alcohol and the volume of alcohol consumed by problem drinkers. Benzodiazepine dependency requires careful reduction in dosage to avoid benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome and other health consequences. Dependence on other sedative-hypnotics such as zolpidem and zopiclone as well as opiates and illegal drugs is common in alcoholics. Alcohol itself is a sedative-hypnotic and is cross-tolerant with other sedative-hypnotics such as barbiturates, benzodiazepines and nonbenzodiazepines. Dependence upon and withdrawal from sedative-hypnotics can be medically severe and, as with alcohol withdrawal, there is a risk of psychosis or seizures if not properly managed.

Epidemiology
Alcohol use disorders world map-DALYs per million persons-WHO2012.svg for alcohol use disorders per million inhabitants in 2012

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The World Health Organization estimates that there are about 380 million people with alcoholism worldwide (5.1% of the population over 15 years of age),  with it being most common among males and young adults. Geographically, it is least common in Africa (1.1% of the population) and has the highest rates in Eastern Europe (11%).

in the United States, about 17 million (7%) of adults and 0.7 million (2.8%) of those age 12 to 17 years of age are affected. About 12% of American adults have had an alcohol dependence problem at some time in their life.

In the United States and Western Europe, 10–20% of men and 5–10% of women at some point in their lives will meet criteria for alcoholism. In England, the number of "dependent drinkers" was calculated as over 600,000 in 2019. Estonia had the highest death rate from alcohol in Europe in 2015 at 8.8 per 100,000 population. In the United States, 30% of people admitted to hospital have a problem related to alcohol.

Within the medical and scientific communities, there is a broad consensus regarding alcoholism as a disease state. For example, the American Medical Association considers alcohol a drug and states that "drug addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite often devastating consequences. It results from a complex interplay of biological vulnerability, environmental exposure, and developmental factors (e.g., stage of brain maturity)." Alcoholism has a higher prevalence among men, though, in recent decades, the proportion of female alcoholics has increased. Current evidence indicates that in both men and women, alcoholism is 50–60% genetically determined, leaving 40–50% for environmental influences. Most alcoholics develop alcoholism during adolescence or young adulthood.

Prognosis
[[File:Alcohol use disorders world map-Deaths per million persons-WHO2012.svg|thumb|upright=1.3|Alcohol use disorders deaths per million persons in 2012

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]] Alcoholism often reduces a person's life expectancy by around ten years. The most common cause of death in alcoholics is from cardiovascular complications. There is a high rate of suicide in chronic alcoholics, which increases the longer a person drinks. Approximately 3–15% of alcoholics die by suicide, and research has found that over 50% of all suicides are associated with alcohol or drug dependence. This is believed to be due to alcohol causing physiological distortion of brain chemistry, as well as social isolation. Suicide is also common in adolescent alcohol abusers. Research in 2000 found that 25% of suicides in adolescents were related to alcohol abuse.

Among those with alcohol dependence after one year, some met the criteria for low-risk drinking, even though only 26% of the group received any treatment, with the breakdown as follows: 25% were found to be still dependent, 27% were in partial remission (some symptoms persist), 12% asymptomatic drinkers (consumption increases chances of relapse) and 36% were fully recovered – made up of 18% low-risk drinkers plus 18% abstainers. In contrast, however, the results of a long-term (60-year) follow-up of two groups of alcoholic men indicated that "return to controlled drinking rarely persisted for much more than a decade without relapse or evolution into abstinence....return-to-controlled drinking, as reported in short-term studies, is often a mirage."

History
Historically the name dipsomania was coined by German physician C. W. Hufeland in 1819 before it was superseded by alcoholism. That term now has a more specific meaning. The term alcoholism was first used by Swedish physician Magnus Huss in an 1852 publication to describe the systemic adverse effects of alcohol.

Alcohol has a long history of use and misuse throughout recorded history. Biblical, Egyptian and Babylonian sources record the history of abuse and dependence on alcohol. In some ancient cultures alcohol was worshiped and in others, its misuse was condemned. Excessive alcohol misuse and drunkenness were recognized as causing social problems even thousands of years ago. However, the defining of habitual drunkenness as it was then known as and its adverse consequences were not well established medically until the 18th century. In 1647 a Greek monk named Agapios was the first to document that chronic alcohol misuse was associated with toxicity to the nervous system and body which resulted in a range of medical disorders such as seizures, paralysis, and internal bleeding. In the 1910s and 1920s, the effects of alcohol misuse and chronic drunkenness boosted membership of the temperance movement and led to the prohibition of alcohol in many countries in North America and the Nordic countries, nationwide bans on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages that generally remained in place until the late 1920s or early 1930s; these policies resulted in the decline of death rates from cirrhosis and alcoholism. In 2005, alcohol dependence and misuse was estimated to cost the US economy approximately 220 billion dollars per year, more than cancer and obesity.

Society and culture
The various health problems associated with long-term alcohol consumption are generally perceived as detrimental to society; for example, money due to lost labor-hours, medical costs due to injuries due to drunkenness and organ damage from long-term use, and secondary treatment costs, such as the costs of rehabilitation facilities and detoxification centers. Alcohol use is a major contributing factor for head injuries, motor vehicle injuries (27%), interpersonal violence (18%), suicides (18%), and epilepsy (13%). Beyond the financial costs that alcohol consumption imposes, there are also significant social costs to both the alcoholic and their family and friends. For instance, alcohol consumption by a pregnant woman can lead to an incurable and damaging condition known as fetal alcohol syndrome, which often results in cognitive deficits, mental health problems, an inability to live independently and an increased risk of criminal behaviour, all of which can cause emotional stress for parents and caregivers. Estimates of the economic costs of alcohol misuse, collected by the World Health Organization, vary from 1–6% of a country's GDP. One Australian estimate pegged alcohol's social costs at 24% of all drug misuse costs; a similar Canadian study concluded alcohol's share was 41%. One study quantified the cost to the UK of all forms of alcohol misuse in 2001 as £18.5–20 billion. All economic costs in the United States in 2006 have been estimated at $223.5 billion.

The idea of hitting rock bottom refers to an experience of stress that can be attributed to alcohol misuse. There is no single definition for this idea, and people may identify their own lowest points in terms of lost jobs, lost relationships, health problems, legal problems, or other consequences of alcohol misuse. The concept is promoted by 12-step recovery groups and researchers using the transtheoretical model of motivation for behavior change. The first use of this slang phrase in the formal medical literature appeared in a 1965 review in the British Medical Journal, which said that some men refused treatment until they "hit rock bottom", but that treatment was generally more successful for "the alcohol addict who has friends and family to support him" than for impoverished and homeless addicts.

Stereotypes of alcoholics are often found in fiction and popular culture. The "town drunk" is a stock character in Western popular culture. Stereotypes of drunkenness may be based on racism or xenophobia, as in the fictional depiction of the Irish as heavy drinkers. Studies by social psychologists Stivers and Greeley attempt to document the perceived prevalence of high alcohol consumption amongst the Irish in America. Alcohol consumption is relatively similar between many European cultures, the United States, and Australia. In Asian countries that have a high gross domestic product, there is heightened drinking compared to other Asian countries, but it is nowhere near as high as it is in other countries like the United States. It is also inversely seen, with countries that have very low gross domestic product showing high alcohol consumption. In a study done on Korean immigrants in Canada, they reported alcohol was typically an integral part of their meal but is the only time solo drinking should occur. They also generally believe alcohol is necessary at any social event, as it helps conversations start.

Peyote, a psychoactive agent, has even shown promise in treating alcoholism. Alcohol had actually replaced peyote as Native Americans' psychoactive agent of choice in rituals when peyote was outlawed.

title: Alcoholism


text:
Talk:Convex uniform honeycomb

Untitled
I did a Google search on: http://www.google.com/search?q=Andreini+tessellation and got no results? Is Andreini the proper name? --css

Some searches for some of the tilings suggest that none of the google pages mention the concept. Andreini is the name used by books I have, but someone else is welcome to change it if they have a better name.
 * Since web search delivers no clue, could you add the "hardcopy" refrences of books you mentioned please? Mikkalai 08:03, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The article claims that "All of these are found in crystal arrangements." Really ? http://www.iucr.org/iucr-top/comm/cteach/pamphlets/21/node4.html says only 17 crystal space groups are known to exist in real crystals (out of the theoretically 230 mathematical space groups) ... but perhaps some "space groups" include more than one "Andreini tesselation" ? --DavidCary 04:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Likely it's impossible in some (or most) of the 230 space groups to find a point which has equal distance to enough of its images to form closed cells. —Tamfang 08:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

 * most of these tesselations actually lie in just three space groups: body-centered cubic, the cubic, and face-centered cubic symmetries. There is one (maybe two) with the symmetry of the diamond lattice, and a few with some of the uninteresting reflection groups. In short, none of the bizarro symmetries are represented, so the claim may be more plausible than it sounds. On the other hand, what does it mean to say that a tesselation appears in a crystal arrangement? -- strauss at uark.edu

I added an enumerations of the 28 tessellations, using the added online links provided. I grouped them as best I could for a first pass. Obviously some pictures need to be added.

The dynamic VRML models (from the first link) were very effective in showing the arrangements of polyhedra at each vertex. For single-view images, transparent faces might be more helpful. Maybe I can manipulate the settings a bit to get some good pictures.

Tom Ruen 12:08, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

alternated cubic
Does "alternated cubic" mean the face-centered cubic tiling by rhombic dodecahedra? If so, it's interesting that a nonuniform pattern can become uniform by truncation; I wonder whether there are any analogous finite examples. --Anton Sherwood 01:35, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * So far, names just come from description at, and so I can't say more. Sorry. Tom Ruen 04:34, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I see now: the "alternated cubic" tilings come from treating alternate cells differently, so that the vertex figure has tetrahedral but not cubic symmetry. —Tamfang 18:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Can you draw the fundamental domain for them? The cubic forms represent 1/48 of a cube - connecting a tetrahedron of vertex, mid-edge, mid-face, and cube center AND one generating point. What does the fundamental domain for an alternated cubic look like? Tom Ruen 00:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

 * The only difference is that the plane {0,1,2} is no longer a mirror, so take that simplex and add its reflection in that plane. —Tamfang 07:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
 * ...or equivalently in the plane {1,2,3}. (Obvious, given duality, but it took me awhile to see it) —Tamfang 20:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Interesting, so there's 4 points: 0,1,3a,3b. The face-center point (2) disappears, and we have two cell-centers. I'll have to think what effect this has! Same thing can be done on a square tiling, but resulting triangle is same 45-45-90 triangle, while a tetrahedron "doubled" generates a different symmetry. If a cubic honeycomb has a symmetry group [4,3,3], I wonder what is the "alternated cubic" symmetry group(s) is/are called? I've got Coexter's notation on sphere symmetry page at least: List of spherical symmetry groups, but not seen any tables for higher [a,b,c] types. Tom Ruen 07:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

 * you mean [4,3,4] not [4,3,3] ;)
 * —Tamfang 05:52, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

 * In terms of crystal symmetry, perhaps it is Tetragonal versus Cubic? Not that I understand much at all about these Crystal structure groups either, but just guessing blindly from the choices and taking away one symmetry plane??? Tom Ruen 07:57, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

 * No. —Tamfang 05:52, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The "bitruncated alternated cubic" is not made by the usual kaleidoscope method with the cell I just described! (It has the right symmetries, but its edges do not meet the mirrors at right angles.) For that you need to double the cell again: reflect the original cell in both of its isosceles triangles, yielding a cell whose corners may be called (±1,0,0), (0,1,±1) — the origin being "1" or "2". This cell can also produce the "octet", truncated alternated cubic, rectified cubic and bitruncated cubic, all of which can also be made with the doubled cell, and of which the last two can be made with the single cell.

The Coxeter-Dynkin graph of the original cubic cell is

o--4--o--3--o--4--o

That of the doubled cell is

o--3--o--3--o |      4       |       o

And that of the quadrupled cell is

o--3--o |    | 3     3 |     | o--3--o

—Tamfang 05:52, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

 * and after laboriously working out these graphs I opened Coxeter's Regular Polytopes and found them staring at me, as it were, at 5.62 (page 85). —Tamfang 04:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

skeleton images
See User:Tamfang/Tilings: skeleton images of bitruncated, cantellated, cantitruncated, runcitruncated and omnitruncated cubic tilings. More to come! —Tamfang 07:45, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

 * Very cool! For fun I linked a thumb image for first in the article. Tom Ruen 09:21, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

the prismatics
The duals of hexagonal-prismatic and triangular-prismatic are not uniform: the edges are not equal. —Tamfang 07:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

arrangement by symmetry
User:Tamfang/Tilings now contains a proposed rewrite of Andreini tessellation. —Tamfang 06:11, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm glad for your work. My only concern is I tend towards wanting a compact table over wordy descriptions. I'd put the descriptions in individual articles. I don't need a specific arrangement, but I like some statistical information like my [a/b] notation for #-cells/vertex and #types of cells. In general I'd try to support different naming systems, like Guy Inchbald uses codes like O+T even if not unique. . Well, and I don't remember what Grunbaum had in his paper, but there was a number of different indices at least to identify them between papers.

 * For me, I'd USE this article as a reference, like "Oh, I have this space-filling tessellation, what the HECK is it, and look at a table to identify it quickly." I accept my table approach could get ugly anyway and could as well go in List of Andreini tessellations. Since I have no time to spare, it's your call what and when you want to replace it. Tom Ruen 07:41, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Something like this?

... and so on ... —Tamfang 21:42, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Something like that. I'm now STUPIDLY thinking of backtracking again, specifically the 2D parallel of uniform tilings, currently at least grouped in given in Tiling by regular polygons or List of uniform planar tilings. Basically whatever sort of table I'd support ought to exist in a parallel article uniform tiling.
 * There's good parallels to consider, like Elongated triangular tiling similar special case like and.
 * Well, also nice to have a table like Archimedean solid except can't have nice VEFC counts.
 * I'll be quiet since I'm indecisive as well as no time! Sorry. :( Tom Ruen 07:12, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

 * (VRML clients for MacOS don't work well, alas.)
 * In List of uniform polyhedra, I counted the VEFC per period. —Tamfang 15:53, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

It's shaping up, go have a look! (User:Tamfang/Tilings) Perhaps instead of the vertex figure it should show the dual cell? —Tamfang 04:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the wire frames of the andreini tesselations are particularly enlightening. I'd much prefer to see the tesselations in solid form. I've rendered most of the 'interesting' tesselations if images are needed. http://xaviergisz.googlepages.com/andreinitesselations —xaviergisz

 * I see both are useful. If you can help add nice solid images, please do! Tom Ruen 04:02, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I moved the added solid images into the table. I also noticed the NEW table is missing the 10 "prismatic" forms (semiregular tilings extruded into prism slabs). These ought to be (RE)added here, even if in a split table. Tom Ruen 06:41, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Okay, I added back the 11 prismatic forms in a brief table. Tom Ruen 07:17, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

illustration
I agree that some of the edge views are not helpful, particularly those in which the edges continue through the vertices. At least they were easy to make. ;) It might help to make the edges parti-colored so that e.g. triangles have white edges, squares have yellow edges and so on.  I'm unsure how to code that idea.  —Tamfang 16:19, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Solid views are sometimes hard to understand because of the hidden parts! I have two ideas to get around that: an "exploded" view, where each cell is appropriately centred but half its proper size; and a "composition" view, where the central cluster showing all the cells together is surrounded by groups of only one cell type. (A picture, when I get it ready, will better show what I mean. To do this well, I have to re-learn Povray texture and lighting technique, which I haven't used in ages.)  —Tamfang 16:19, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Someone improved the solid views while I wasn't looking. Kudos! —66.52.133.106 22:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Stub articles
I completed stub articles for all the nonprismatic forms. Just dropped in a sentence and nearly empty table. I figured it was worth the start for completeness since we had images. Lots of table fields to fill. All my time is done for now! Tom Ruen 00:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

 * Get some sleep ;) —Tamfang 06:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Conway's take on things
for what it's worth, Conway has a whole batch of names for the vertex-uniform, non isotropic tilings of space by archimedean polyhedra. (By non-isotropic, I just mean to rule out the tilings by "slabs"-- that is, the tilings with one of the cubic symmetries) The enumeration is of course the same as the Andreini tesselations.

I've put an excerpt from our forthcoming book that includes pix at comp.uark.edu/~strauss/downloads/archilles.pdf

Conway calls these tilings architectronic and their duals catotropic (you can read the rationale in the file)

strauss at uark.edu

Reference indexing
I used Grumbaum's paper to cross reference the honeycombs from varied sources. I also reordered them to match Johnson's indexing, since the truncation operation approach (for cubic at least) matches his derviations. For the cubics I also added four cell columns, as done with the uniform polychoron article. I've not seen Johnson's 1991 paper, but it looks like he had a systematic nonseequential approach for indexing that skipped numbers and grouped them into 10's. Tom Ruen 18:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

List of figures
The list of figures i use is of my device. George Olshevsky quotes me as discovering two in the 143 convex tilings in four dimensions. 1 occurs in 1dt, 1-4 in 2dt, 1-6 in 3dt. This list arranges all of the prism-layers at the beginning. So 1 designates the square, cubic, tesseractic, etc. The 8 at #2 include hexagon-prisms, etc. Because we count the cubic at #1, it is removed from later contention. This is why 434 gives only 7, and 434 only 14.

1. The comb products on the horogon (square, cubic, tesseractic, etc) -. in one dimension: 1 2. Ten non-comb tilings in 3d: 44 = 2, 36 = 6. 3. The snubs on 44 and 36 4  The laminate tiling LC1P -. In two dimensions, 11 5. Wythoff Mirror edge on these groups 434 (7), 43A (4) and 3333: 1 6. Laminate tilings: LC2, LC2P, LB2, LA2P, LB2P -. In 3 dimensions. 28 7. 55 products of #2 * #2. 8  Wythoff's Mirror edge on 3343 (28), 4334 (14), 433A (4), E33A (0), 33333: (7) = 53 9  The snub tiling s3433 10 The laminate tilings LB3, LC3, LA3P, LB3P, LC3P, LC1A2, LC1B2, LC1C2 = 8 -. In four dimensions, 145

This list consists of 145, not 143 that George gives. I am not shure which two he suppresses. --Wendy.krieger 10:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks Wendy. I'll get through George's list sometime soon and compare myself. Tom Ruen (talk) 07:10, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Noncompact and hyperbolic honeycombs
I added two sections for noncompact honeycombs in Euclidean 3-space, and compact honeycombs in hyperbolic 3-space. Just a start, just included Coxeter groups so far. Probably I'll move them to the end and expand the intro when I get the enumeration included. Tom Ruen (talk) 07:10, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

The expanded section Convex_uniform_honeycomb is pretty long. I'll replace it with a summary in that section when I'm done and move the enumerated tables to a new article, like Convex_uniform_hyperbolic honeycomb(?) Tom Ruen (talk) 22:16, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I was just thinking the same thing - the page is taking noticably long to load. Something like Convex uniform honeycombs in hyperbolic space might be a bit more evocative, I think. Antony-22 (talk) 06:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Vertex figures
Using the vertex figure diagrams for the uniform 4-polytopes in Conway's new book, I made some crude diagrams for vertex figures for the cubic honeycomb family. I think they're simpler than the 3D diagrams which don't have edges labeled by face order. I colored them based on {p,q,r}={4,3,4}, with red={p}, green={q}, purple={r}, yellow={}x{}={4}
 * Cubic honeycomb family verfs.png

I'll be doing the same for the uniform polychora (Talk:Uniform_polychoron), but thought I'd start here. If this is good, perhaps someone with SVG skills can make some nicer ones! Tom Ruen (talk) 23:41, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

 * Mine are prettier but these are more useful. —Tamfang (talk) 10:10, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

 * I started adding the diagram vertex figures, some missing, some "mis-colored" from a different symmetry, but I'll upload more when I finish them. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

This chart covers p=q=3 (quarter cubic family), and 5 hyperbolic groups. Tom Ruen (talk) 06:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

 * I think I have all the new (tetrahedral domain) vertex figures completed and checked. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:16, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

historic booboo
What was Andreini's wrong example? —Tamfang (talk) 20:09, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

 * You can look yourself. I emailed you Branko's paper in PDF. Andreini order indices are listed as A#, with A? for missing tessellations, and A#' for gyro-variations missed. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:19, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

 * The first page mentions that Andreini's #13′ is false, but does not describe it (nor mention it again)!
 * Given that Andreini #13 is the quarter-cubic, we can conjecture that #13′ extends it with trihex prismatic slabs, supposing that Andreini overlooked the vertices interior to the T+tT slabs. —Tamfang (talk) 02:33, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Maybe define the subject of the article?
"Convex uniform honeycombs" is not a common phrase, and it can't possibly be a great deal of trouble for someone knowledgeable on the subject to take a couple of minutes to define exactly what that means at the beginning of the article.

After someone went to a great deal of trouble to list all the cases diagrammatically, surely letting readers know *what* is being listed would improve the quality of the article dramatically.

One more thing: Is it common to list as a reference to a Wikipedia article an unpublished manuscript (and especially one that has no description of where it can be found)? I think not. But two such manuscripts are listed as references for this article.Daqu (talk) 16:28, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

 * On references, Branko Grünbaum's paper Uniform tilings of 3-space is the ONLY print-published source of the complete listing of 28 forms. He used the paper to describe the incompleteness of the original 1905 listing of 25 forms, and gives credit to normal Johnson and I. Alexeyev for their unpublished enumerations that preceeded his. He referenced Johnson's book as a manuscript, so I figured it was valid to do the same. I've not seen Alexeyev's listing in any form. I've seen George Olshevsky's enumeration as a PDF. Tom Ruen (talk) 21:39, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

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It would be nice of the Archimedean components of the honeycomb could be instantly read off in the tables
It would be nice of the Archimedean components of the honeycomb could be instantly read off in the tables. Currently their names are not listed, unfortunately.216.161.117.162 (talk) 21:20, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Convex uniform honeycomb