The importance of drug use histories in a series of alcoholics.

A structured questionnaire was used to evaluate the history of drug and antisocial problems in 163 consecutive male alcoholics. Primary alcoholism in the absence of misuse of substances other than marijuana was seen for 71%, multi-drug misuse of 18%, and 11% fulfilled the criteria for the antisocial personality. The primary sociopaths with secondary alcoholism demonstrated the highest levels of alcohol and drug related difficulties, while the multi-drug abusers tended to be midway between the primary alcoholics and sociopaths on these measures.