If there was a cure for alcoholism...

[LosingmyMisery]

For some reason, I feel compelled to say I don't like the word cured when it comes to my alcoholism. I used it up thread a few times because of the title of the thread, but it just doesn't sit right with me. As an alcoholic, I don't think there ever is a cure. There is recovery, which I work on daily, but once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, IMO.

Maybe there will be a medical cure in the future. However, I would be very apprehensive about it. I have come to far to move backward. Putting my faith in a pill is risky, that is why I will stick with what I know. BUT, I did ask about the pill when I was first trying to get sober. I was willing to try anything to get past the horrible compulsion and cravings. As I mentioned earlier, I couldn't get the pill so I had to work on fixing myself from the inside out, recover from the symptoms of why I drank in the first place. I'm not totally opposed to the idea, but I think it is important to work farther into recovery, sweep out the cobwebs, so to speak. Anyways, I know, I got a bit sidetracked, but wanted to add that "cure" is a scary word for this alcoholic. When an alcoholic starts thinking they are cured, they are heading into deep trouble.

[OneForTheRoad]

LmM - i can understand your reservations about the word 'cure' and your apprehension. I'd also agree that full recovery needs more than a pill

I wish you continued luck in your recovery

[Russelrb]

Cure? There is a cure...a slow, lonely painful death.

[bugsworth]

All this banter back and forth to find a cure for a disease that does not exist. It is amazing how human beings can complicate the hell out of the simplest of concepts. If you have cultivated a self destructive habit such as alcohol or drug dependance change your behavior. Behaviors are not diseases.

[OneForTheRoad]

disease that does not exist. ..........change your behavior. Behaviors are not diseases

Timber!

LOL That should give you and ago plenty to discuss. Can I sell tickets?

[bugsworth]

In all honesty Road it boils down to what we choose to believe. I take full responsibility for my past and present behavior. I work in the medical profession and see real diseases all day long. Diseases that have nothing to do with choice and behavior. I see no comparison to what I did to myself and what my patients have to endure.

[OneForTheRoad]

well I'm in between both of you. I believe there is an element of choice, but that the choice is compromised to varying degrees by physical impairment/addiction. I don't think addicts have a free or easy choice, but neither do i think you can just blame 'the disease' - that to me is a cop-out

[Lo0p]

I've changed my opinion on this recently. I used to believe what bugsworth does. Now that I found out that there is a cure, I believe I had a choice 8 years ago and I believe I will have a choice in a couple of months when I'm done. But for the time in between, I do blame the disease.

[Lo0p]

The following quote is from a speech give by By Bill W. (Co-founder of AA) " ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS IN IT’S THIRD DECADE" . Presented to the New York City Medical Society on Alcoholism April 28, 1958:

" We also realize that the discoveries of the psychiatrists and the biochemists have vast implications for us alcoholics. Indeed, these discoveries are today far more than implications. Your President and other pioneers in and outside your Society have been achieving notable results for a long time, many of their patients having made good recoveries without any A.A. at all. It should here be noted that some of the recovery methods employed outside A.A. are quite in contradiction to AA principles and practice. Nevertheless, we of AA ought to applaud the fact that certain of these efforts are meeting with increasing success. We know, too, that psychiatry can often release the big neurotic overhang from which many of us suffer after A.A. has sobered us. We know that psychiatrists have sent us innumerable alcoholics who would have never otherwise approached AA, and many clinics have done likewise. We clearly see that by pooling our resources we can do together what could never be accomplished in separation; or in short-sighted criticism and in competition. Therefore I would like to make a pledge to the whole medical fraternity that AA will always stand ready to cooperate, that A.A. will never trespass upon medicine, that our members who feel the call will increasingly help in those great enterprises of education, rehabilitation and research which are now going forward with such promise. So menacing is the growing spectacle of alcoholism that nothing short of the total resources of society can hope to vanquish or much lessen the strength of our very dangerous adversary, John Barleycorn. The subtlety and power of the alcoholic’s malady is revealed on every page of mankind’s history - and never so starkly and so destructive as in this century. When our combined understanding and knowledge have been fully massed and applied, we of AA know that we shall find our friends of medicine in the very front rank - just where so many of you are already standing today. When such an array of benign and cooperative action is in full readiness, it can, and will surely be, a great tomorrow for that vast host of men who suffer from alcoholism, and from all its dark and baleful consequences."

[tricky164]

recovery is in the big book, cure is only in your own mind.

[Pinkcuda]

It's not a "disease" Bugs, it's an illness. There's a difference. You'll find that Mental Hospitals are full of people that are mentally "Ill" not mentally "diseased"
By your definition, these hospitals should not exist because these people are fully capable of making their own choices.

[CarolD]

The OP decided to leave our site.
This thread is closed
You may open another if you are interested.

Thanks for sharing ...