Researchers say they don't know why African-American and Hispanic adults were twice as likely to receive counseling from a physician on using alcohol than white adults were, but that is what they found.

They speculated that this could be a rare instance of minorities receiving better health care or it could mean physicians assume African-Americans and Hispanics have problems with alcohol

New research shows that individuals who started drinking when they were 14 or younger are more likely to use alcohol, inappropriately, as a strategy to relieve stress throughout their lives.

According to Deborah Dawson, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health, who was the lead researcher, That is even worse than it initially sounds. That is because even when they aren't experiencing stress "their base levels of drinking are already higher than those of other drinkers," Dawson was quoted as saying in a press release

Alcoholics face another obstacle to recovery. Many find themselves tossing and turning instead of sleeping when they stop drinking because alcohol acts as a sleep-inducing sedative.

Researchers found that insomnia and other sleep problems could slow down recovery. Also, a person's perception of the severity of insomnia was just as important as the actual problem in terms of recovery

Russia is well known as country of great alcohol consumption and little is ever said concerning alcoholism. So it might not be too difficult to fathom that on average 42,000 Russians die each year from alcohol related illness.

But many of those deaths have little to do with over consumption and everything to do with counterfeit booze and poor government regulation. Quite often, a cheap bottle of vodka sold in Russia can contain cheap perfume, cleaning liquid, aftershave, and just about anything that might pass as a strong drink

In a new study on life expectancy, the average life span of those in America varies greatly.

For example, an Asian-American woman will likely live almost 20 years longer than an African-American male who lives in an urban area