Originally Posted by
Justfor1 
This is just my opinion. Please just take it as that. No, alcoholism is not a disease. It is a moral choice one makes in life. Cancer patients do not steal, lie and endanger public safety. Family & friends rally around the sick cancer patient but look down upon the alcoholic/addict. Cancer is a disease that one can prove while alcoholism is vague. Most doctors, secretly, do not believe in the alcoholism model. Cancer patients pay their bills & are not looking for hand outs. IMO, the "alcoholism is a disease" model was designed just to make alcoholics feel better & not so guilty. I choose not to pick up because I am tired of being a "drunkard" as the Bible puts it.
You're looping in the wreckage our drunk behaviors create as symptoms of our disease. They aren't. Alcoholics respond differently to ethanol than non-alcoholics. It's processed within us in an unusual way. That's where the disease begins and ends. Nothing more, nothing less. I didn't make a choice to have this biological response to ethanol any more than I made a choice to have a particular blood type or to be male or human.
That being said, I don't doubt there are people who try to use their disease as an excuse to behave badly. These are two separate issues.
I think the disease model gets a bad rap because so many people like to use it to defend their horrible behaviors.