SportsFan15

If someone could help clarify something for me. Can someone be an alcoholic without EVER having had a drink?

I'm not referring to "dry drunk" where someone has quit drinking but not healed from alcoholism.

In my post about dysfunctional parents, I love what someone wrote:


<<<<<Alcohol doesn't have to be present in your lives for them to be alcoholics. They could've been alcoholics before you were born and went dry. They could've switched addictions to whatever--food, work, money, pain pills, etc.

It's not just the alcohol, it's the alcohol-ISM too unfortunately. Just because the alcohol isn't there doesn't mean the thinking, behaving, and reactions to life aren't still there. Many people have quit drinking but are still walking around with untreated alcoholism.

There are many people who grow up in alcoholic homes without a drop of alcohol being present.>>>

I have a lot of the traits of Adult Children of Alcoholics although my parents were able to moderate their drinking and were only occasional drinkers.....yet we were QUITE dysfunctional!

ubntubnt

for me alcoholism means "unable to control your drinking". I cannot see how that applies to people who don't drink in the first place so I would have to say no.

Thats not to say there aren't all sorts of other issues or ISMs that need to be addressed. But specifically alcoholism, nope.

Gottalife

That's quite a question. Medical science seems to be on the trail of specific genes which may indicate a predisposition, but opinion at the moment seems to be there is an environmental component as well. Therefore it is not guaranteed that someone with the gene would automatically become alcoholic. This explains that while alcoholism may run in a family, it may skip a generation or a sibling.

It is said that alcohol comes in bottles, alcoholism comes in people. Take the alcohol away and you still have the ISM (internal spiritual malady). I suppose if the alcohol was never there in the first place you could still have the ISM. Many people report that it was there before they took their first drink, though it wasn't my experience.

In a medical sense at the moment, I don't think it is possible to diagnose alcoholism in a patient who has never had a drink. Such a person would not be damaged in the physical sense either. But I imagine they would not be that happy with their lives.

Though it is hard going, I would suggest William James and his book Varieties of Religious Experience. In it he discusses sudden conversion experiences among credible people whose lives had for one reason or another become unbearable. I don't think alcoholism was a factor in his research, just how lives can be changed by conversion experiences.

The reason I am happily sober today has nothing to do with not drinking by means of will power, and everything to do with conversion experience which has made drinking redundant.

JD

I would be so bold to say everyone on this earth is dysfunctional in some respect. Doesn't mean they're an alcoholic.

Fly N Buy

Dysfunction is universal - alcoholics don't have the market cornered on certain behaviors. Feelings of less than, social anxiety etc may be masked by alcohol use but are not only present in "latent alcoholics" of some sort in my experience.

I am convinced based on reading, specifically Under The Influence by Milam and Ketchum - there is heredity/predisposition to alcoholism.

My opinion is one has to drink to be considered an alcoholic but could definitely have similar traits to one who identifies as being an alcoholic in active alcoholism or otherwise.

I am grateful that in sobriety I can work on my shortcomings and improve the quality of my life for myself and those whom I love.

Thanks for the thread - I hear this a lot in AA and have changed my opinion over time.

Read this in AA Grapevine recently -
"There is a tendency to label everything that an alcoholic may do as 'alcoholic behavior.' The truth is, it is simply human nature ... Emotional and mental quirks are classified as symptoms of alcoholism merely because alcoholics have them, yet those same quirks can be found among nonalcoholics, too. Actually they are symptoms of mankind."



William Duncan Silkworth, MD, January 1947
"Slips and Human Nature"
Best of the Grapevine, Vol.

LiveInPeace

That was my post. I was told in 1998 that I grew up in an alcoholic home without the alcohol. I didn't understand what this therapist meant until a couple of years ago.

Yes there is the physical allergy aspect of alcoholism but her point was that families or an addicted person all act similarly to varying degrees no matter the behavior or substance person is addicted to. It's not just drugs or alcohol.

All addicted people have the same reactions to life and mental obsession.

Regarding alcohol-ism, just because you take away the alcohol, the disease is still there. "Bottles are but a symbol".

Our lives are still unmanageable without the addiction, unless we turn to our higher power/God.

I hope I explained this well but I feel like I didn't.

She was just trying hard to convince me to go to Acoa or Alanon, and I kept looking at her completely baffled because my parents didn't drink. Back then, I thought alcoholism was ALL about alcohol. But it is actually a three prong disease physical, spiritual, mental.

I didn't grow up in a "dysfunctional" home in the sense that someone posted that "everyone is dysfunctional." I find that invalidating. I stand by what my therapist said. My story was the same as others in Acoa and Alanon but without the actual alcohol. It was in some ways worse because my parents didn't have alcohol to treat their malady.

LiveInPeace

There is a huge difference between "Quirks", "Dysfunction" and "Abuse". Ever been around a bat **** crazy mother addicted to rage worse than in the movie "Mommie Dearest"? Can I stop trying to defend myself here now? What an invalidating thread.

I stand by what this therapist told me in 1998 because I finally got what she meant.

You can have an "alcoholic" home without the alcohol. It's the behaviors she was talking about. Obviously not a true alcoholic in the sense of the physical, mental, and spiritual disease. Until you all spend ten minutes with my severely emotionally abusive mother and father I don't want to hear it.

Syn3rgistic

No.

Soberwolf

No

MelindaFlowers

nooooooooo.

ubntubnt

Seems like your therapist was using "alcoholism" as a proxy to describe the dysfunctional destructive environment you grew up in and I am sure there were many parallels so it makes sense. I don't she meant it in the literal sense of the word.

awuh1

YES

I think there are some individuals that have genetic predispositions such that the fist time they have alcohol they are unable to control their drinking. The question is then - were they an alcoholic before that first drink, or did that first drink make them alcoholic? It seems to make more sense to think of them as alcoholic by virtue of their genetics. These people are (thankfully) rare exceptions.

I believe that the vast majority of alcoholics loose the ability to control their drinking more gradually. I believe it's the consumption of alcohol over time, (possibly along with some amount of genetic predisposition) that leads to their inability to control its consumption.

I'm not one who believes that people are alcoholic by virtue of their behavior. While I agree that many alcoholics may share certain dysfunctional behaviors or personality traits, these are by no means universal. Many also suffer from a spiritual malady, but again, I do not believe this is definitive.

What defines an alcoholic is the inability to control ones drinking, and that IMO can exist even before the first drink.

MythOfSisyphus

I'm in the kind-of/maybe camp. I do think some folks- like me- have a predisposition, an addict's personality. For my own part I can say that the first time I ever got drunk I felt like "Wow! Where have you been all my life, alcohol?" On the other hand, there was no chance I'd have become addicted to some random thing like exercise, etc.

Gottalife

This came up in a discussion just the other day. Quite a few of us in this group were born alcoholic. All it took was the first drink to set things in motion. We didn't grow into it, there were no years of moderate drinking, it was full on from the start. Funnily enough there was no sign of the spiritual malady back then. Our lives were fine until we started to drink. In my experience alcohol doesn't produce alcoholics, but it can activate alcoholism that is ready and waiting.

So it is imo possible to be alcoholic before the first drink, just impossible to diagnose or treat in the conventional way. Difficult to have a desire to stop something you never started, drawing a long bow to suggest someone who never drank suffers from alcoholism. No obsession of the mind, no phenomenon of craving, no loss of control, where is the reason to get treatment?

Treatment for dysfunction, psychological treatment may make more sense.

stevieg46

Don't really know but glad to accept that I am one .

In Scotland about 20 years ago I heard about this guy 65 years of age , church officer , accountant and firmly anti-alcohol all his life , the church he belonged to was also firmly anti-alcohol .

This guys office colleagues decided to throw a small party to celebrate his retirement and present him with a gold watch .

He was coaxed and cajoled into having a ''small sherry .

3 months later two members of AA were called to his home where he was marching about stark naked brandishing a large knife in front of his wife and two daughters and grand children .

Was this guy an alcoholic all his life before lifting the first drink ? .

They say that selfishness and self centeredness is the ''root '' cause of our problem or the most prominent ''symptom ''of alcoholism .

Again don't know if this guy displayed these tendencies before ever
lifted his first drink .

Genetics ? don't know , my father was eldest and alcoholic , I am eldest and alcoholic , my son is eldest and alcoholic /addict .
I had two brothers without alcohol problem , I have two children one with alcohol problem hmmn?.

I know the Answer ''its in the name'' , my father was Stephen , I am also Stephen , my son is Stephen ha ha ----- but you never know ?. 18 Years ago my grandson was born , I asked my son if he was calling him Stephen ? he said ''no effing way '' hee hee but true .

Regards .

Stevie.

Physics4Life

I really dislike some of the AA dogma that's thrown around about alcoholism. There is no scientific evidence that suggests someone that has never taken a drink is already an alcoholic. Alcoholism develops over time, usually as a physiological response to heavy drinking.

2ndhandrose

my own experience was "instant alcoholic, just add alcohol".

My father was a major hoarder and my mother was very codependent. When I originally went into recovery the first time (in 1986 for 6 years) my addictions counsellor likened me to an ACOA. We didn't have the term "hoarder" to use back then. I have checked out acoa information and I fit quite well into the definition. My childhood was a mess of denial, secrecy, shame, enabling, etc. but neither parent drank.

Just my experience.

OpenTuning

An interesting discussion.

My personal view is that human beings are extraordinarily complex organisms with many, many factors influencing different behaviours. What makes one kid get bored after swimming for ten minutes, and another get up before dawn to dedicate many hours a day, day in day out, year after year until they're winning medals at the Olympics? Genetics? Inherited traits? Or just different personalities with different interests and obsessions?

Can you be an alcoholic who has never had a drink? In the literal sense, no. Can a lifetime non-drinker have personality traits that are the same as an alcoholic's? Of course. But it would be interesting to know which specific personality traits those are, and how they're specific to alcoholics.

I must admit, I worry a bit about claims about genetics or other hereditary factors simply because some people use those as an excuse. "What can I do, it's genetics, I was destined to be an alcoholic", which runs against my deeply held belief in our personal freedom to choose our own destinies. Of course it isn't something we get to vote on, and I'll accept whatever the final scientific consensus is. Though I suspect it might take a while, if ever, for a consensus to emerge. There's just too many factors involved.

Syn3rgistic

Very good post. I disagree with the last part of the last sentence though because you simply cannot know someone is an alcoholic until they actually are. You cannot know if someone lacks the ability to control one's drinking, until they lack the ability to control their drinking. I understand your idea is theoretical, and I'm sure on some level you acknowledge this, but the idea isn't pragmatic at all.

Andante

I'll vote no.

I think you can have an extremely high inherent potential ("talent," maybe?) for alcoholism without it ever being realized, and you can exhibit many of the common "ism" symptoms of alcoholism as described by AA without ever having taken a drink, but to actually be an alcoholic requires alcohol.

On the flip side, there are those who can drink heavily for many years and develop a physiological tolerance and dependence on the drug without ever exhibiting any of the symptoms of the "ism."