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Good News For Senior Alcoholics

Much is known about the damaging effects of alcoholism on the cognitive (thinking) function of the brain. There is also a growing body of knowledge on how much recovery occurs with abstinence.
However, there is little research available on cognitive functioning in very long term abstinent alcoholics, especially the elderly.

This research examined 91 elderly abstinent alcoholics (EAA) (49 men and 42 women) with an average age of 67.3 years and who were abstinent for an average of 14.8 years. They were compared to a comparable light/non-drinking control group. The EAA group was divided into three subgroups: abstinent before age 50 (EAA1), between 50 and 60 (EAA2), and after age 60 (EAA3). They were assessed for cognitive functions such as attention, verbal skills, cognitive flexibility, immediate and delayed memory, reaction time, and auditory working memory. EAA1 was the only group to perform worse than the controls and this was only in the one category of auditory working memory. Since this group had fewer years of education and auditory working memory is associated with education, this finding should be interpreted with caution. The EAA1 group had the highest family history density for alcoholism and the earliest onset of alcoholism which may have contributed to impairments in auditory working memory. Surprisingly, groups EAA2 and EAA3 performed better than controls in a number of cognitive functions.

The study concluded that these elderly alcoholics, even if they drank late into life but had at least 6 months of abstinence, exhibited normal cognitive brain function.

However, the researchers point out that approximately 75,000 deaths each year are attributed to either excessive or risky drinking, making alcohol the third leading actual cause of death. It may be that cognitively healthier alcoholics with more reserve brain capacity are more likely to survive with relatively intact cognition into their 60s, 70s, or 80s and be more likely to volunteer for studies such as this. Thus these findings, though positive, hopefully do not imply that all elderly alcoholics with long term abstinence will retain normal cognition.

(Fein, G, McGillivray, S: Cognitive performance in long-term abstinent alcoholics. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research31:1788-1789)

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