wpainterw

Hi MemphisBlues:
It's not a question of "blaming". That's just part of denial. But it is a question which remains very meaningful entirely apart from "blaming" and entirely apart from the overriding need to realize that recovery will always remain the primary responsibility of the alcoholic along with those who help that person on his or her way.
So what is the question then? I think that many physicians today would recognize that in the past the level of training for doctors in alcoholism and other addictive illnesses was shockingly low. This was probably due to the assumption that alcoholism could not be successfully treated, that alcoholics were just "bad" and that they would never get well unless they mended their ways. Often physicians made the problem worse, like the one who gave me an "open" (perpetually refillable) prescription for liquid chloral hydrate early on. Or the one who gave me a prescription for seconal to be taken along with sodium amytal to "help" insomnia. And the one who gave me a refillable prescription for 100 Xanax. And the one who opined that alcoholism is always merely a symptom for an underlying sexual conflict and invited me to join his sex conflict therapy group.
So, rather than "blame" physicians, I can still say this: We need and are probably getting better informed physicians today than we had forty years ago and, secondly, it's still important to find a physician who is familiar with what is known today about alcoholism and how to treat it. I'm not a physician but I am very much of the view that a primary responsibility of a doctor is to emphasize the importance of a patient's seeking help from some kind of a group of fellow alcoholics, whether AA or some similar alternative. Along with this should come regular urine and blood tests to confirm that recovery is continuing and that denial has not set up a barrier between patient and physician. I take any "blame" for delaying my own recovery but in retrospect it might have been a little easier if the medical help was up to the standard that is increasingly available today.

W.