After reading many of these reply to this thread I must say that a lot of people seem to misunderstand sociopathy, wanting to hurt people or start fires or having a less than ideal childhood is less than definitive to this condition, as a sociopath who has been through therapy and other professional help i can tell you the core of this condition is in the absence of empathy, this is what causes the manipulative and survivalistic traits of a sociopath, from personal experience I can say that alcohol and drugs do little but exacerbate antisocial behaviour through impairment of judgement, meaning the sociopath in question cannot consider long term consequences as efficiently, I would like to stress that if you you can identify in any capacity with your fellow humans you are not sociopathic as this requires a level of empathy with which sociopaths are incapable, people are a means to an end to us, life is a game which we are hard wired to win, although I admit there are those of us less capable than others