Quarterly Journal of Studies On Alcohol, 33: 1147­1148, 1972

THE ODDITIES OF ALCOHOLICS

Mark Keller

Summary:​ Alcoholics are different in so many ways that it makes no difference.

A splurge of reports in the 1940s, of biochemical characteristics purporting to differentiate alcoholics from non­alcoholic stimulated me to review a voluminous related literature, implicating physical, social and psychological demarcators as well. The only conclusion I could derive, from the entirety of the reportage, took a form that became known, among colleagues, as KELLER’S Law: The investigation of any trait in alcoholics will show that they have either more or less of it. Accordingly, I then predicted that if sexdactily should be investigated, alcoholics will yield either more or fewer six­toed and six fingered people than a control population.

Numerous subsequently published studies seem to confirm this law. Compared with other populations, alcoholics are, for example, less bald, more first or last born, less introverted, more color blind, less socialized, more dependent, less responsible, more Dupuytren’s contractured, less frustration tolerant, more alcohol tolerant, less religiously active, more accident prone, less hypnotizable, more amnesic, less hippurate excretive, more psychopathic, less mother­loved, more hepatitic, less hypertensive, more drug­consuming, less conditionable, more anomalous­alcohol­dehydrogenasic, less bucolic, more suicidal, less married, more enzymatic, less longevous, more incarcerated, less feminine (women), more effeminized (men), less potent (men), more frigid­promiscuous (women), less prosperous, more impulsive, less libidinous, more genetically vitamin­needful, less arteriosclerotic, more rigid, less self­sex­image secure, more cardiomyopathic, less anesthetizable, more depressed, less body­hairy (men), more anxious, less time­sensitive, more sociopathic, less fecund, more risk­taking, more endocrinopathic, more rejected, more charming, more compulsive, more imaginative, less treatable and more thirsty.

A search of the Classified Abstract Archive of the Alcohol Literature indicates that sexadactily has not yet been studied. In my opinion, however, additional researches tending to validate this law are not necessary.