Originally Posted by
ScottFromWI 
To be clear, I am not suggesting that PAWS does not exist. I am merely suggesting that it is not a Diagnosable condition. I think it is true that those in recover from alcohol or other drugs likely do face some long term challenges that others that never used/abused do not face.
My main point in the matter is that we shouldn't use "PAWS" as a reason to sit back and do nothing about what ails us. If we are experiencing depression, we should seek help to treat depression. If we are experiencing anxiety, we should seek help for our anxiety. If we are experiencing gastrointestinal issues we should see a GI doctor. And so on and so forth.....
Whether the symptoms are caused by PAWS or not, there is a solution to most of them.
Your point about using PAWS as an excuse to avoid confronting the challenges of recovery is well taken.
However, my point is that there are a number of peculiar symptoms commonly experienced in post-acute withdrawal that can't easily be categorized or treated conventionally. Because of this gap in recognition by the medical community, and because of people who insist that PAWS is a figment of a hypochondriac imagination, sufferers are left to conclude that they must be losing their minds.
When I was experiencing a cornucopia of bizarre symptoms months and even years into sobriety, I can't tell you what a relief it was to happen onto an article that described almost exactly those symptoms and explained them as lingering neurological artifacts of years of alcohol abuse -- PAWS. With this explanation in hand, I was able to concentrate on aspects of my recovery that I could control and take action to minimize the effect on my well-being of those I couldn't, feeling at least a little more secure in the knowledge that these symptoms had a logical explanation and weren't signifying some kind of insidious progressive dementia.
From reading here on SR over the years, I have found comfort in learning that I'm far from the only person to have had this experience. I've also found frustration in encountering closed-minded types who insist that if a condition hasn't already been assigned its own pigeonhole and prescribed treatment by the established scientific community, it can't exist.