Could have screamed!!!!!
Member
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 4,682
Dont know what the debate is over? Addiction is clearly not a disease but can definitely be classed as an illness (mental) and im pretty sure actually is in the US?!
As for the choice thing that as with most things is down to the perception of the person making that choice, if they think there is no choice then there is no choice...for them...
I was getting to know a lady the other day and we ended up talking about this at length as she was not too keep on alcoholics and believed that anyone could simply stop using/drinking at anytime...she understood in the end though and any 'normal' person can understand IMO if you explain it in an objective manner:-)
Like i have said before if a drunk/addict does not think they have an illness and think it is just a simple choice to drink/use or not then they must be just plain stupid to have not made that choice after the first consequence?! That said if they know it is a choice now then happy days make the choice not to drink/use...whats the problem?
Really the only choice we seem to have in active addiction is to get help...once the invisible line has been crossed:-)
As for the choice thing that as with most things is down to the perception of the person making that choice, if they think there is no choice then there is no choice...for them...
I was getting to know a lady the other day and we ended up talking about this at length as she was not too keep on alcoholics and believed that anyone could simply stop using/drinking at anytime...she understood in the end though and any 'normal' person can understand IMO if you explain it in an objective manner:-)
Like i have said before if a drunk/addict does not think they have an illness and think it is just a simple choice to drink/use or not then they must be just plain stupid to have not made that choice after the first consequence?! That said if they know it is a choice now then happy days make the choice not to drink/use...whats the problem?
Really the only choice we seem to have in active addiction is to get help...once the invisible line has been crossed:-)
Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 42
some people are just too ignorant to understand this addiction..... take my mom for example... her dad drank himself to death and died at 77... when I was
trying to quit back in 2008 the speech I got from her was "just don't drink
you don't need to" and she tried to shame me thinking this will CURE me....
then she said something even more unbelievably stupid... she says
quitting drinking is EASY and quitting smoking is hard...
Some people just DO NOT get it as to how complicated it really is!
I'm seeing an addiction councilor, after my third visit I insisted he
tell me if he was a past addict himself, and he was.... if he
wasn't what would be the point of talking to him?
unless they walk in our shoes they have no ******* clue how it's like.
trying to quit back in 2008 the speech I got from her was "just don't drink
you don't need to" and she tried to shame me thinking this will CURE me....
then she said something even more unbelievably stupid... she says
quitting drinking is EASY and quitting smoking is hard...
Some people just DO NOT get it as to how complicated it really is!
I'm seeing an addiction councilor, after my third visit I insisted he
tell me if he was a past addict himself, and he was.... if he
wasn't what would be the point of talking to him?
unless they walk in our shoes they have no ******* clue how it's like.
Laozi Old Man
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Detroit, MI
Posts: 6,665
Originally Posted by Angelic17 
Addiction is mostly a mental disease,condition, or whatever you want to call it.
Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Michigan
Posts: 73
I was alcohol free for 4 months then I chose to drink. There were many options out there to prevent me from drinking but I chose not to take them. We are not powerless and we have choices. If people need to call it a disease I agree but I think it should be called a mental illness. I think that is why people have a problem with it because it is not a true disease in the sense that people understand it. But if you were to classify it as a mental illness (which I truly believe it is) people might understand it better.
Member
Join Date: May 2010
Location: East Coast
Posts: 1,906
Originally Posted by kody99
I was alcohol free for 4 months then I chose to drink. There were many options out there to prevent me from drinking but I chose not to take them. We are not powerless and we have choices. If people need to call it a disease I agree but I think it should be called a mental illness. I think that is why people have a problem with it because it is not a true disease in the sense that people understand it. But if you were to classify it as a mental illness (which I truly believe it is) people might understand it better.
to ponder that point further......
i think the whole medical commmunity is still in it's infancy with mental illness though. while they have made good positive strides in the last 30 years, there is still a ton of information that is just left to grey areas. i think this is the same area where alcoholism and addiction play.
let's face it...we as a group of recovering addicts and alcoholics know of a few good tools that can keep you sober, but that's about it. the biggest stride in treatement came when DR. Bob and Bill Wilson started AA after WW2.
that same method...that 60+ year old method is still what keeps most of us alive, today.
So, while there is more treatment available now, imo, we still don't know the depth of this obsession completely...or even mostly.
I read somewhere that the success rate of long term sobriety is somewhere around 13%. that's about 1 in 10 people will stay sober long term. that's a REALLY scary statistic given the severity of this ...
Adventures In SpaceTime
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Posts: 5,827
Originally Posted by kody99
I was alcohol free for 4 months then I chose to drink. There were many options out there to prevent me from drinking but I chose not to take them. We are not powerless and we have choices.
My alcoholism is arrested. I know this because of the termination of my obsessive ideations and cravings within a slow process and not a instant one day thing. I also know that without some sort of daily devotions and philosophy of spiritual health through a program of recovery my alcoholism would awaken. I am powerless without that spiritual help.
Life happens in strange ways. Within my arrested alcoholism is a danger and risk that I could possibly drink again. I can not pretend that my obsessive drinking was all my choice. It went beyond choice. Way beyond. I was powerless to get me back to where i once belonged.
So yeah, it is a free choice I have today to drink or not only since living a sober life gives me the right of choice. Drunk however, my choices were not so free. I did have choice and I did not have choice. Once drinking my choices were to get drunk and get drunk and get drunk some more. At times, I was simply powerless to decide to drink or not drink, so of course I drank. With spiritual help I could surrender to my wanting to get drunk and actually obstain simply from having a desire, a simple desire, to not drink and be sober. A desire though does not equate to living a sober life. A desire is the door opened to that sober life.
When I opened that door still most of me just wanted to be drunk. My spiritual help bridged the differences for me and so i progressively began to live a sober life.
I do not believe I have been and am not now lacking being responsible to my alcoholism with my understanding of it as an illness for my self or for others. It affords me no excuses by that willingness to surrender to my illness. I have only become increasingly more responsible as a person who has alcoholism than i ever did as a person who simply thought he had all the choices in the world to drink or not drink.
RobbyRobot
A work in progress
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: South Jersey
Posts: 16,633
I think the "disease debate" really only matters when you are talking politics, research, funding, etc. I do think that it has reduced the stigma for those of us who suffer from addictions (except for smoking, lol--that addiction seems to be where the otherwise compassionate draw the line).
As far as recovery goes, it doesn't matter to me a bit how or why I became an alcoholic. It is, as someone pointed out, a moot question once your drinking is out of control. The solution to the problem is to stop drinking, but different people respond best to different approaches. The other piece of it is, for most of us, by the time we are ready to stop drinking, our lives have become fairly messed up. Whether we have "lost everything" or merely had a few close calls, our drinking has adversely affected us. So there's work to be done once we put the plug in the jug. Also, some people have a lot more trouble with cravings than others once they've stopped drinking. I was lucky, in that my obsession to drink was lifted almost immediately. I can't afford to get complacent about it, because it might return someday.
I think the bottom line is that each person has to do whatever is necessary to stop the drinking and repair the damage. AA has a good solution that addresses both. If going to rehab and counseling and engaging in other self-help works, great. But do what needs to be done.
As far as recovery goes, it doesn't matter to me a bit how or why I became an alcoholic. It is, as someone pointed out, a moot question once your drinking is out of control. The solution to the problem is to stop drinking, but different people respond best to different approaches. The other piece of it is, for most of us, by the time we are ready to stop drinking, our lives have become fairly messed up. Whether we have "lost everything" or merely had a few close calls, our drinking has adversely affected us. So there's work to be done once we put the plug in the jug. Also, some people have a lot more trouble with cravings than others once they've stopped drinking. I was lucky, in that my obsession to drink was lifted almost immediately. I can't afford to get complacent about it, because it might return someday.
I think the bottom line is that each person has to do whatever is necessary to stop the drinking and repair the damage. AA has a good solution that addresses both. If going to rehab and counseling and engaging in other self-help works, great. But do what needs to be done.
Member
Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 651
I don't give sheepsh!t in a bow basket what you call it I can not drink without terrible consequences! If I drink that first beer its my own damn fault! Why don't we let everyone out of prison who was under the influence when they committed a crime? Hey they have a "disease" .....right?
No most people don't understand that we can't have "just a couple" and I no longer try and explain it to them. Look don't drink and use whatever method you have to to not drink that first one.....just do not drink!
No most people don't understand that we can't have "just a couple" and I no longer try and explain it to them. Look don't drink and use whatever method you have to to not drink that first one.....just do not drink!
Member
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: scotland uk
Posts: 293
Originally Posted by littlefish
Just my two cents worth: I think the word disease is used for lack of anything better. Because what I have, alcoholism, is indescribable and incomparable to other addictions.
Drugs like heroin are so addictive that if the average person subjects themself to it for long enough, they will become an addict.
If a non-alcoholic drinks alcohol long enough.....nothing happens. They don't become addicted. No matter how much they drink in high school, college, early career years. They can still walk away from that drink. I see that time and time again when I compare myself to my husband. He can drink a lot at a party and get drunk. But the next morning the last thought on his mind is: another drink. Me? Once I take that first drink, I can't think of anything else but the next one.
Now, I KNOW there is something different about me. When I took that first drink and started one of my many binges....I changed. My entire frame of mind changed. The alcohol did something that it doesn't do to other people. When I struggled with relapsing.....I was astonished to see how my entire character and mood would alter dramatically.
Of course the argument of choice comes into it. But for me, it wasn't to choose to drink or not to drink, to accept I am powerless over alcohol. It was a choice of a much broader theme: not the choice of drinking or not, but the choice of one lifestyle over another.
No, although I am an AA-er, I am not completely satisfied with the word disease, because my understanding of disease is that it is something I have no control over, such as cancer.
Yet, I know that my entire brain function and body chemistry is completely altered by alcohol in a different way than other people.
My view is that in another few decades, researchers will probably be able to come up with a better label. After all, the allergy and disease theory was established 70 years ago virtually without research.
But, I can't wait that long for someone to come up with a pleasing label. I know I am different when it comes to alcohol, I know too that I am strong and that I have faced some incredible life hardships with strength and resolve. I know I am not weak. But, when it comes to alcohol, all bets are off. I am different from the normal person when presented with a glass of wine. Call it disease, call it addicton, call it whatever. I just know, without a single doubt in my mind that there is something in my physical makeup that simply cannot tolerate the use of alcohol.
Drugs like heroin are so addictive that if the average person subjects themself to it for long enough, they will become an addict.
If a non-alcoholic drinks alcohol long enough.....nothing happens. They don't become addicted. No matter how much they drink in high school, college, early career years. They can still walk away from that drink. I see that time and time again when I compare myself to my husband. He can drink a lot at a party and get drunk. But the next morning the last thought on his mind is: another drink. Me? Once I take that first drink, I can't think of anything else but the next one.
Now, I KNOW there is something different about me. When I took that first drink and started one of my many binges....I changed. My entire frame of mind changed. The alcohol did something that it doesn't do to other people. When I struggled with relapsing.....I was astonished to see how my entire character and mood would alter dramatically.
Of course the argument of choice comes into it. But for me, it wasn't to choose to drink or not to drink, to accept I am powerless over alcohol. It was a choice of a much broader theme: not the choice of drinking or not, but the choice of one lifestyle over another.
No, although I am an AA-er, I am not completely satisfied with the word disease, because my understanding of disease is that it is something I have no control over, such as cancer.
Yet, I know that my entire brain function and body chemistry is completely altered by alcohol in a different way than other people.
My view is that in another few decades, researchers will probably be able to come up with a better label. After all, the allergy and disease theory was established 70 years ago virtually without research.
But, I can't wait that long for someone to come up with a pleasing label. I know I am different when it comes to alcohol, I know too that I am strong and that I have faced some incredible life hardships with strength and resolve. I know I am not weak. But, when it comes to alcohol, all bets are off. I am different from the normal person when presented with a glass of wine. Call it disease, call it addicton, call it whatever. I just know, without a single doubt in my mind that there is something in my physical makeup that simply cannot tolerate the use of alcohol.
I can't wait till researchers come up with a proper diagnosis for what we suffer from.
Alcoholism or addiction doesn't seem appropriate to me. I was addicted to nicotine, it just doesn't compare. Stopping smoking was painful, stopping drinking was not, but the idea of never, ever having another drink could be very painful indeed.
I don't believe we lose the power of choice of whether to go and buy drink or not, I think its that we just can't bare the alternative. Once I took a drink though, it definately affected me differently from other people. Once I realised there was hope, support and I could lead a happy life without it, I didn't need it....simples!
Currently Active Users Viewing this Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
