concolor1

Particularly the shills for the pharmacy companies who insist that the alcoholic has underlying psychiatric and emotional problems and if we can just find the right pills, we can medicate them into normalcy . . .

For bi-polar or schizophrenic conditions, fine--although the prognosis is likely to be grim--and the research on anti-depressants indicates they have their place because neuro-transmitters have been depleted during the course of the disease and their structures disrupted . . . My experience is those individuals are a very small minority of those who seek treatment, but are over-diagnosed in the treatment community because it's easier to write a script than engage in some confrontive, cowboy-type therapy . . .

It's also cheaper to give them pills than provide a safe therapeutic environment where they can heal at the pace they require . . .

As for statements like, "addicts/alcoholics have underlying emotional, personality and/or behavior issues that they used drugs/alcohol to deal with," that's one of the most unenlightened assessments I've ever heard, and it isn't supported by the literature or the science.

Not that the untreated ACOA's aren't persistently reinventing this particularly wheel and blinded by the perceptual disorders that accompany their condition (is someone going to suggest their stuff is 'normal' and not part of "underlying emotional and behavioral issues"; the characteristics of these types have been repeated documented, and are far more predictable and are likely as problematic as the sober symptoms of alcoholism). It gives them a marvelous excuse not to look at their own role in matters and allows them to focus on the "identified patient." Alas, I sat in on too many family therapy sessions to let that one slide by my BS detector . . .

From a speech I heard from Clancy I. given over 20 years ago: "If your problem is alcohol, the solution is simple. Stop drinking. If your problem is alcoholism, stopping drinking will have no effect on your problem except to make it worse by making reality more painful."

Similarly, in a "Grapevine" article, Clancy also notes, "The sober curse of alcholism is the loss of emotional tolerance for reality."

In the disease itself, there are well-documented and well-understood denial patterns that are adopted as survival mechanisms by that individual when addictive disease develops.

These diseases "mitigate" the emotional responses to an invidual's actions just as ordinary folks' rationalizations mitigate their reaction to ordinary events . . . From Psych 101 . . .

Husband: "You burned the roast."

Wife: "That's because your mother called."

Note the avoidance pattern . . . Not "I forgot because . . ."

As for that ACOA/codependency stuff I was talking about, a friend who's also a former treatment pro said he picked up on that one when he interviewed the significant other of an alcoholic he was counseling and asked, "So how are you doing?"

"I'm fine," was the reply, even though she had been through a series of particularly traumatic crises. My friend said he realized from her "reality" that she really was doing fine in a situation that would have sent ordinary folks reaching for the pill bottle or a gun or a razor blade . . . The cognitive operations and defenses were operating at their peak survival optimum . . .

Okay, rant almost over. Recovery for an alcoholic involves the shattering of the maladaptive defenses adopted in the early course of the disease. Treatment often involves "exorcising" the remnants as well, and providing information and socialization to rebuild more appropriate defenses.

In the meantime, the individual is vulnerable; the sensitivity and adolescent "regression" posturing noted earlier are readily apparent . . .

Add to this alcohol's effect on the neurotransmitter pathways involving both norepinephrine and dopamine--which are raised to a high state of "arousal" during withdrawal, and the picture becomes complete.

It's a disease folks, and I'm not going to stand quietly by while this stuff is used as a club--albeit a sophisticated one--to use on affected individual; the mantra of codependent recovery programs is "put the focus on ourselves," and I see this thread as doing anything but . . .

Probably time to bring in the awful word "motives" again . . . My guess is that people putting this stuff out won't care to have theirs examined . . .

Some excellent works on this subject include those of Vernon Johnson, founder of the Johnson Institute, and early inerventions service, John Bradshaw, Melody Beattie, Rokelle Learner, and others who've pioneered the dysfunctional family/codepency movement, Patricks Carnes and Charlotte Davis Kasl for their work on sexual addictions, and Dr. Drew Pinsky, an addictionologist who regularly appears on a number of cable TV shows.