Alcoholism followed by schizophrenia.

On the basis of findings of earlier workers, and our own unsystematic observations, we put forward the hypothesis that alcohol abuse was an important etiological factor in some schizophrenia-like psychoses. We tested the hypothesis by comparing schizophrenic patients who had abused alcohol with schizophrenic patients who had not. The findings generally support the hypothesis, and indicate that a chronic psychosis distinguishable by a hallucinatory onset and, at its height, by visual hallucinations, may be one of the complications of alcohol abuse.