If a person has inner demons that gives him or her the propensity to abuse his children, he will do it whether he is sober or drunk.
Alcohol lowers your inhibitions, so if you have a pre-disposal to be violent, your ability to NOT act on your violent tendencies is lowered. You need not look very far to see that abused children report that their beatings usually took place when Daddy had been drinking.
People CHANGE when they are drunk. People will freely do things when they are drunk - that they would never seriosly consider doing when they are sober.
Habakkuk 2:15 ¶Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!
16 Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the LORD’S right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory.
No, I think that’s wrong.
My younger brother has problems with alcohol. Recently, due to a violent episoded with his first wife, that I witnessed and had to interfere in, I tried to get him committed. Frankly, I thought he was bi-polar or something. He was insane.
Turns out, after a 10 minute psychological evaluation, it was determined that he was merely alcoholic, and so the State of Alabama had no resources to treat him. His eldest daughter asked the pschologist, “What happens after he kills someone?”. He said, “There’ll be plenty of resources available then”.
Here’s the thing. His first wife told me that he had never beaten her. That he only cheated on her under while under the influence. I can believe the first assertion, but I don’t know about the second.
But anyway, by the time he got married again, he seems to have been willing to beat his wife. Of course, it probably didn’t help that she also had a problem with the sauce, and actually was diagnosed as bi-polar.
But anyway, as his first wife told his two eldest daughters once, “Your father didn’t just get up one morning and decide to be a full raging drunk”.
The behavior seems progressive, in my observation.