paulmh: When I suffered from terminal uniqueness the phrase didn't have any meaning - nor could it, because I was inside the condition. I wasn't being wilful about it, because "terminal uniqueness" describes an unconscious condition.
I totally agree. That's a really important distinction you make, Paulmh. Thank you.
kurtrambis: I have also done it myself, as a result of the kind views held by people on this thread, I re diagnosed my depression as alcoholism came off my anti depressants and relapsed.
I'm confused by your assertion here, kurtrambis. I think there's sometimes some misunderstanding about the term terminal uniqueness. No one would hypothesis that ALL aspects of our character or experience are blandly monotonous. Obviously, we all are unique in personality and life experience. Not all aspects of alcoholism are the same. There's a huge variety on all levels.
You seem somewhat hostile to the concept of terminal uniqueness. I don't mean to indicate that all people who don't accept all aspects of one perspective of one program are dammed to die. That somehow if you don't mold yourself or fit yourself (even horribly uncomfortably) into the cookie-cutter form of that program than you are doomed.
Terminal uniqueness is merely one way of talking about one very small aspect of how many of us have gone through a stage in our drinking and sobriety where we believe ourselves to be such an exception to the world of recovery that we are somehow denied access to recovery. Our brain tells us that there's no way the solutions we are being offered have anything to do with us. There's no way that they would work for us because we are so uniquely different.
I'm not sure what that has to do with your depression. I myself am bipolar and am on 4 different pysch drugs in order to stay stable. I couldn't be sober if I didn't take my medications. Stopping my meds would not be an example of me deciding I should stop being so "different" and "conform." It would just be foolish in terms of my mental health and therefor, be putting my sobriety at great risk.
Not everyone who has special circumstances in their life that make it difficult for them to find the right road to recovery are suffering from terminal uniqueness. But everyone who dies after repeatedly arguing that their alcoholism is a different kind of animal from the alcoholism the rest of us suffer from - they could reasonably be mourned as having been suffering from what many of us call terminal uniqueness.
But at the end of the day, it's just a linguistic term. It's just a way of talking about something that we sometimes see around us. It's not an empirical truth. It's just a phrase to help us talk about things we sometimes see or experience.