MrTumble

The nature of the alcoholic, catch 22, if you could of stopped the moment you realised, you would probably have never been an alkie

alphaomega

Or how about this - how about we educate our youth on the fatal dangers of alcohol ?

Perhaps sophomore year health class ? Or phys ed freshman year ? Or both ?

When alcohol starts becoming the answer to awkward teenagers every ailment. We teach our children about history like its their job. They memorize the Constitution and Preamble and Pledge of Allegiance and the fifty states in alphabetical order. But, yet, we don't educate them on the extreme dangers of overconsumption.

I wish I had known what I was setting myself up for. Learned it in a classroom like setting, with Susie Cheerleader, the girl who pukes through her nose every night of every weekend from Rock and Rye shots.

What I have learned it through pouring over this board, I wonder what I would have done differently.

BackToSquareOne

Isn't it an interesting human quality that we almost feel a need to justify the things we do?

Ptcapote

I have often questioned myself on this issue extensively. Both of my parents were/are alcoholics. My father's alcoholism not only cost him basically everything (great job as a professor, respect of his friends and colleagues, standing in the community, his finances, his physical health, his family) but he also died a horribly painful and lonely death. Literally. When he died, at age 54, he had been abandoned by everyone, including me.

I HATED alcohol and everything about it.

I didn't start drinking until I was in my mid-late 20s but the fact that I ever did still baffles me and makes me think it WAS my fault because I knew damn well both my genetics and where alcoholics wind up. And what absolute devastation alcoholism brings to family and loved ones.

So, yeah, I guess I do think it is my fault in a way for ever picking up that first drink with that knowledge. After that? Once I was firmly in it's clutches it was like there were two people living inside of me and one I couldn't seem to get under control. Could I have stopped much sooner? I like to think the answer is heck yes. But did I think I was as bad as I was? The real answer is probably heck no until the end.

And by then, I just stopped giving a sh*t most of the time.

So it's hard question but very, very good thread.

KyrieEleison

No

caboblanco

yes it's your own fault. for me that was refreshing because it was easier to track down the solution

BackToSquareOne

Science knows how addictions work, in deep active addiction the brain gets hijacted by the addiction. It could be said that the person will find it very hard to make rational decisions in this state. The addiction usually wins. Powerless in this state, you could say that.

Once past active addiction tho it is possible to never restart the addiction by not using the substance in any amount. So if you keep restarting the active addiction again and again and refuse to get help then that's another story.

Arbor

In my early twenties I smoked cigarettes for sometime. One day decided to stop. Cold turkey. I never felt addicted to the nicotine and or process so it came easy. Started drinking around the same time. Never felt it was a problem throughout my twenties. Fifteen years and I'm an alcoholic. Definitely a progressive disease that genetically I'm predisposed too. And I never saw it coming. So I don't fault anything or anyone. I move on and look forward to more sobriety.

Bostonsportsfan

It kinda is, kinda isn't. I'm 21 and a recovering alcoholic and I had no clue about what drinking everyday could do to you until it happened.

Boleo

I don't think it is as important to hunt down the snake that bit me as it is to get treatment ASAP.

ViciousCycle714

Well....yes, ultimately everything is our own fault......otherwise we are nothing but machines running a program......what happens to us is not always our fault...how we deal with it is 100% our fault...you give up that.....you don't even exist.

mick3580

Fault is not as important as that it is my responsibility.

MrTumble

Imagine there are 1000 species of snakes, some poisonous, some not, and the poisonous ones are lethal and non-lethal, and out of those lethal snakes, there might be multiple different treatments for each species of snake...

In such cases, the nature of the snake becomes essential.

Moving back to alcoholism, if we understand the nature of the addiction, whether the amount of alcohol, the genetics, a virus, some chemical inbalance or some psychological predisposition desire/death wish, makes a big difference on how we might prevent and treat the problem.

Hmmm, Imagine that, if alcoholism was caused by a virus, some bacterial infection that requires alcohol to survive (been reading too many sci-fi books)

Bostonsportsfan

This sums up what I was gonna say. I kept drinking even when my family and friends told me to slow down. I drank every night when it was a choice and put myself in a position where it was a necessity.

copernicus

It is my fault that I drank socially in high school and college, just like most of my peers. Am I disappointed in myself for having fun like this? No. Now that I know I am an alcoholic, I don't know if I will ever stop drinking completely. Will I be disappointed/disgusted with myself if I ever stop trying to minimize my drinking, when I know the damage it causes me? Absolutely!

MrTumble

I dont agree that science has a good understanding on the nature of addiction, I would say its very sketchy grasp on the subject, actually a research area that's quite neglected by *real* science. It would benefit us all greatly if more research funding was funnelled to understanding addictions and perhaps developing some way to reset the nagging desire to go out and get smashed on alcohol.

Im all for self-help, and abstinence, but if there was a treatment that 100% worked and removed the craving for alcohol, then I would gladly take it.

nomis

Ugggh, blame. So much of our addiction is wrapped up in this. Many people come to SR with intense feelings of shame, guilty, embarrassment, much of it because of that word.

Blame keeps more people from getting help than getting better. You tell someone alcoholics and addicts are bad people, that some sort of moral defect is responsible for their addiction, then guess what, most people are going to deny they have a problem. They usually go to great lengths to hide their illness (how many hiding bottle stories have we read here) and often isolate themselves as much as possible, conditions under which addiction thrives.

I've seen blame also affect my family. They have blamed my addiction on genetics and my poor choices, so desperately scared that they did something wrong in raising me, and have totally ignored the huge mental impact it has had on them.

There are always very good reasons that people become addicts. It almost always comes down to an inability to regulate stress, stress that has become so intense it is traumatic to the brain, and then we begin to self-medicate our problems away.

A few people have mentioned not being worried about their very young children being affected by their addictions. I would unfortunately say that they are wrong. One of the few things we can say pretty clearly about addictions is that there is a VERY high correlation between childhood trauma and the disease. The more intense, and earlier the trauma in life, the higher the likelihood of developing addiction later in life, by magnitudes of thousands of percent, compared to people who experienced no trauma in childhood.

When I first got drunk at 16 I knew I had done the wrong thing. I had blacked out and made a complete fool of myself in front of my classmates. My mother had warned me all my life that I was genetically susceptible alcoholism. But I couldn't wait to do it again. I was self-medicating all those intense feelings of emotional pain away, to me that was more important than anything else.

But just because I don't blame myself for my alcoholism, doesn't me I'm not responsible for my actions. I put my head in the sand for a long time, 18 years, and that cost me a lot of pain and misery, not only for me, but for anyone who had the misfortune of getting close to me.

Everyone who is sick has a responsibility to get healthy, that's true of any condition. I was irresponsible, I refused to get help for a long time.

As Nuudawn says, there is no healthy reason blame should be associated with our conditions. Blame keeps people sick instead of helping them get better.

Boleo

If I could somehow go back in a time machine and talk to the 14 year old version of myself, I doubt there is anything I could say to that teenage version of me that would prevent him from experimenting with alcohol.

A) It was too attractive.
B) I (at 14) was too curious.
C) I (now) would have to admit to him (then) that it was, in fact, fun for the first decade or so.

Now that I think of it, drinking was an experience that I would not have wanted to miss. Recovery as I now know it, is another experience that I would not have wanted to miss. The only part that I would have wanted to miss was the 5 years or so where drinking did more harm than good.