Your disease wants.....
 

I was thinking of someone who, after I mentioned tending to want to be alone, said to me, "Your disease wants to get you alone."

A search on the string, 'your disease wants' produced several if not many threads with those words in them.

It's interesting. You don't hear anyone say, 'your fibromyalgia wants....' or 'your celiac sprue wants....'

Perhaps because it's an addiction? Addictions are about wanting/craving. Why not, simply 'your disease wants you to drink'?

But no, apparently this disease of alcoholism is very complex. It works on different levels of our thinking. It's an emotional/behaviorial disease with a spiritual component.

And I, like you, am recovering from a hopeless condition of mind and body. Whatever this disease wants, I know my only hope of rising above it's death grip is the daily maintenance of my spiritual condition. What am I? I am alcoholic. What does my disease want? It wants me dead.

My first thought when I saw your title and looked at myself, it wants my life and that is not an option and not going to happen, it's an ugly truth about this sickness and I for one enjoy the sober side of the grass.

Andrew

To be specific, I would like to be able to type 'the addicted part of me wants..' but 'my addiction' is quicker and gets the same point across.

I don't use 'disease' because I don;t want an argument :)

I take your point about other diseases - but it's interesting I can write things like 'my depression wants to isolate me' or 'my self esteem stops me from doing things' and those things fit?

D

What is the cunning trick addiction pulls? Convincing me that I don't have it. Thanks for the post, I needed it.

Just made me think of Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects when he said "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world he doesn't exist".

Same thing with our addiction - it keeps whispering "you are fine - no problem - you aren't really addicted at all!"

I have found that saying 'my alcoholic voice says' or 'my alcoholic voice wants' to be a reasonable assignment, instead of 'my disease'.. Some diseases have no cure and that can be a problem, especially if they are mental constructs. Choosing to say 'my AV' makes things simple because that relegates it to a mere thought whose existence can be accepted and then simply dismissed.

whether i call it my disease, this condition i have, my alcoholism,. or anything else, i never ascribe a personality to it that "wants", "desires" "needs"...there is no thing there that has a will that wants me sick, or lonely, or dead, or drunk.
there are...hm...levels of me that have those desires, but not some separate entity that wants me dead, for example.

I look at it as just shorthand. I don't call it a disease, but addiction is certainly a medical condition, and it takes too long to say, "The neurochemical patterns I imprinted upon the cellular automaton that I call my brain, that is the same as "me" but twisted a bit, are trying to compel me to do X". ;) A lot of people, especially early in recovery, are helped by looking at it as a me vs. it battle, and if it helps then I don't see any harm in looking at it that way even if it's really a lot more complex.