Scientists found the gene for alcoholism twenty years ago

. Many people remember the hoopla surrounding the announcement in the early 1980s that the DRD2 gene was the cause of alcoholism. This finding stimulated a lot of research, most of which was not able to conclude that this gene is related to alcoholism any more than to other psychiatric diseases. As of this writing, the DRD2 finding is controversial, and now groups of geneticists working on alcohol are finding that other genes related to neurotransmitters (GABA, serotonin) are more likely to be related to the causes of alcohol dependence.