IS SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY RELEVANT TO ALCOHOLISM

The concept of self-organized criticality suggests that large interact ive (dynamic) systems move toward a critical state. Seen throughout na ture these systems follow a power law where the amount of energy invol ved in a change is related to the number of events that have occurred such that N is proportional to one over E to the power b (N proportion al to 1/E(b)), where N is the number of events, E is the energy of the event and b is a constant for the system. A pilot series of 316 indiv iduals reporting alcohol problems were studies and the number of indiv iduals (N) reporting number of detoxifications (D-N) was found to be r elated such that N was proportional to one over D-N to the power k (N proportional to 1/D-N(k), where k varies with the parameters of the po pulation studies (i.e., gender, time sober). It is hypothesized that t he ''disease of alcoholism'' can be conceptualized to be related to th e energy of effort required to move from one ''attractor'' (drinking) to another (non-drinking) as a power law. The results suggest that alc oholics are ''attracted'' to the critical state of intoxication indepe ndent of clinical presentation or initial conditions.