jalec: There's a lot of wisdom in the admonition to "keep it simple". Let the doctors and researchers debate about what alcoholism is, what "causes" it, etc. The main thing for me is how to recover and how to make recovery stick. Some of the insights of AA have been a tremendous help to me like "one day at a time" and not trying to change stuff you can't change. I don't take it all dogmatically however. All I know is that it seems to be be working for me and I'm grateful for that. Over analyzing recovery can be a subtle way of avoiding the process itself, like taking endless time to plan a canoe trip, researching the history of canoes, reading up on camping, etc. and never shoving off in a canoe and grabbing a paddle. You could end up by being the biggest self styled expert on alcoholism and still very unhappily drunk as a skunk.
W.