AA4life

These are pretty related to me. Addiction is addiction. However, it is difficult for me to relate to someone that has to go to some shady neighbourhood somewhere to get their fix. All the while they are looking out for police.

Leadfoot

An alcoholic doesn't develop a physical craving until after he/she takes the first drink. An addict has a physical craving before he/she takes their drug of choice and takes the drug to alleviate the craving.

Fernaceman

I disagree with that statement.

Fernaceman

And alcohol is a drug, too. A VERY strong drug.

Leadfoot

Don't confuse physical craving with mental obsession.

DayTrader

in my OPINION, they're similar but different.

alkies start to drink and want more. Heroine users get their hit and want to enjoy the nod. I know crack/coke/heroine folks who drank quite normally. I know alkies who were able to stop the drugs but not the booze (I was one of these......stopped extasy and coke on my own....and life got better.......couldn't stop the booze and when I could get some time life got worse).

the physical cravings are different (as leadfoot explained) as are (generally, but not always) the mental obsessions.

With all that said.......in many ways they can be almost exactly the same and, assuming we're looking at an "AA qualified" alcoholic and a "NA qualified" addict (ppl who fit the qualifications as alkie/addict for each program), the solutions are identical.

Grymt

I got into online horse betting last year for about six months until I worked out it's a mugs game. When I stopped I had withdrawal symptoms that were similar to aspects of alcohol withdrawal. I don't want to go through that again or where it might lead. A difference was being able to think more clearly about what was happening and stop. I guess I just have an addictive streak. Women, booze, tobacco, gambling. I'm even addicted to myself. This period in SR is teaching me the importance of being grateful, accepting gratitude and listening. Listening is hard for me, having a tendency to egocentricity.

aNewEternity

the only difference I can see is that the alcohol dose is typically administered gradually over a several hour period, not so for most drugs.

britabroad

Fascinating question / discussion.

I only get the booze addiction. I said on another thread recently, I have even tried smoking cigarettes, do it maybe twice a year (one cigarette only) and never feel the urge at any other time. Why is that? I tried pot in high school but never really got into it, and have never tried it in about 18 years.....and again, no urges or thoughts to do it. I have never done any other of the illegal drugs.

Why just booze then? I think the question of it being legal is totally relevant, especially for me. I was always too terrified of ending up with a police record for illegal drugs...although, having said that, I didn't ever crave them. Was that only because I had never tried them, whereas I had tried booze due to its social acceptability / legality?

And gambling addiction....I do not get at all, and yet I am an alcoholic. That suggests there must be different paths of addiction in different people's brains.

Fascinating.

2granddaughters

To me it's about as simple as we alcoholic/addict personalities go through our day kicking, squealing and complaining until we can't take it any longer and finally scream (inside our heads... sometimes outside).

The hell with this !! I'm going to get ______ (you can fill in the blank with your choice(s) DRUNK, HIGH, SEX, CASINO,WORK etc) .... pretty well anything to excess.

I don't feel good and one or more of the above will make me feel better.

Other than the drug of choice I think we are pretty well all alike.

All the best.

Bob R

TheEnd

What? So you're saying that a herion addict once they are off they drugs, they are no longer addicted. Why would that be so and alcohol would be different? You do know that alcohol is a drug right?

Spirit08

Alcholism isn't an addiction, it's an illness.

smacked

I've been addicted to a lot of things, alcohol was no different in etiology or recovery for me.

fini

yep, different. distinctly so. smoking and quitting THAT after three decades was an entirely different thing.
didn't live in the same place in me, so to speak.

Gottalife

Complex question which most will answer according to their experience.

I am an alcoholic, I don't understand the first thing about drug addiction, the substances, the language, the motivations are all completely alien to me. So to me they are different.

But I know addict alcoholics who have experience on both sides and many of them would say they are the same.

I do know that it is esatblished medical fact that alcoholics are bodily and mentally different. They metabolise alcohol differently to normal folk and this is why the craving comes after the drink, not before, unless you've just woken up in the middle of a bender! lol.

What I also know is that mind altering chemicals of any sort - prescribed or street - are highly dangerous for me. My last bender started with a puff of weed. A drink was down my neck in seconds after that.

A few years ago I gave up smoking. Totally different ball game to alcohol. The cravings were an absolute killer. At one stage I went to my doc about how I was feeling. Ho said you are depressed you need some of these SSRI pills. No way said I, I'm in AA and we just pull our socks up! i.e work with others. Then he said "but these aren't like the old meds, they are not addictive". Well, neither is alcohol, to most people.

So while alcoholism, not drug addiction, is my problem and most medications for diagnosed conditions work just fine, I am very careful when it comes to anything mind altering.

God bless,
Mike.

NYCDoglvr

I've been sober 21 years and consider alcohol my drug of choice. For me, addiction is addiction. I've read that medical people consider alcoholism worse than drug addiction because you take so many other people (family, friends) are pulled down with us.

Leadfoot

If you read my previous post I explained that a "craving" is a physical need for the substance. In the drug world the craving is alleviated by consumption. Once the substance is taken the physical need goes away. After a couple weeks the physical need for the substance will most likely be gone too. In the alcohol world the physical need for the alcohol is not present until alcohol is ingested into the system. Once you consume alcohol your body has an incessant desire for more.

Now the question is that after ten years without an opiate do you become addicted once again is you consume a little here and there? Can an addict of cocaine become a casual weekend warrior without becoming addicted again? Truth is that I don't know. I don't play with drugs and never have. I do know that once an alcoholic drinks after ten dry years they're off and running. An alcoholic can never become a normal drinker regardless of the dry spell or the intentions once they feel "cured"

deadlydame

Do I view alcoholism as distinctly different from other forms of addictive behavior? Absolutely not!!!!! (But this is my experience. I do not claim that the same is for everyone else) I was addicted to shoot up heroin, amphetamines, pot... And my last affair with addiction was with alcohol. The ways in feeding an addiction to alcohol may differ from the one of feeding one to heroin. But in the end, they both had the same cunning effect to take everything away from me: My health and worse, my self-worth. Whether society considers an alcoholic differently from a junky, whether addicted to heroin or alcohol, I ended up at the exact same place of despair and chaos.

LexieCat

Both. I think alcohol and drug addiction and other "addictive" behaviors share a lot of commonalities, but I think they are different enough that separate recovery programs make sense. I am one of the last of the "pure" alcoholics, I suspect. Never did drugs except for smoking a little pot in college (which I never particularly liked--only smoked if someone passed it to me). If I get pain-killers, I hate the way they make me feel, and I get off them the second the pain can be managed with ibuprofen.

I do have a bit of an OCD tendency to get wrapped up in obsessive behaviors, though I wouldn't consider any of them an addiction. But I can see how, for some people, they could become as much of an obsession as alcohol was for me.

There's a physical and mental component to addiction. The physical component I think varies according to your "poison" of choice, if it is a substance. I think the mental component is probably similar, but still, the substance or process you are addicted to will to some extent determine what your danger zones for relapse are, and obviously you are going to benefit more from a support system made up of people who share your particular obsession.

Interesting to think about, as long as I'm not derailed in my recovery by debating in my head whether I am this or that "label". I know I am an alcoholic. That much I can deal with. The rest, thankfully, I do not have to struggle with. I know others suffer greatly from their obsessions/addictions, and I hope they find the same freedom I have.

JJamie

Its just so easy to get alcohol and I think that makes it harder for alcoholics to stay sober.