Tamerua

Thanks Allfor! I'll look for that... I would agree from personal experience that this is true (transferring food to booze, personally).

WhiteFeathers

It's such an interesting question and one I've been thinking about a lot lately.

I think there is a disease process involved in alcoholism and addiction. However, I don't think all "alcoholics" suffer from the "disease."

I do consider myself an alcoholic. I attend AA and I am committed to sobriety. If I pick up one drink, I'll probably get back on the path I was on before where I was drinking a six-pack during the day and a bottle of wine a night (that was on an average day). However, I don't feel like I suffer from the disease of alcoholism. For me, it feels like a choice. I kept drinking because I had a compulsion to do so. For me, it honestly did feel like a habit I had gotten into and needed to get out of.

Once I got it through my head that I had to stop drinking, it wasn't even that hard. Yes, I've had cravings and I've thought to myself "what if I just have one??" but I've been able to stop myself because I know the answer to that question and it won't be good. I did not have the need for rehab or detox, I just stopped.

I know that if I kept my drinking up, I probably would be joining the ranks of the disease alcoholics who simply cannot stop without serious help.

So, what is alcoholism? I like the analogy to diabetes. If you eat a ton of sugar, your body will react by going into a pre-diabetic state. If you take action and change your behavior, you will be able to avoid disease. If you ignore it and choose to maintain destructive behaviors, you may develop disease.

LexieCat

But there ARE people who exhibit every symptom of full-blown alcoholism from the very first drink. I know people like that. My first husband was like that. Mine, like yours, developed more gradually.

Mountainmanbob

lizatola

Just wanted to chime in on what Lexie said here:
I have a friend who separated from her diabetic husband because he wasn't managing his disease and she was tired of the worry and watching him get sicker and sicker. He finally agreed to take care of himself, work with the doctors, and work with the family. 6 months later he died in a car accident caused by him going into a diabetic episode because he wasn't taking his insulin! He also nearly killed another driver, sending the other man to the ICU for months with life threatening injuries.

So, I guess I do see the correlation between untreated alcoholism and untreated diabetes in this instance. Thanks Lexie for bringing that up, something to think about.

BlueSkies1

It's not a debate in the medical community. Alcoholism was labeled a disease in 1966.
This year, Obesity made the rank. Obesity is now a disease.

I suppose we are splitting hairs sometimes on this topic and it comes up every few months!

We're all humans that indulge in something that is less than healthy here and there.

Seems the only time we don't like the label as a disease is when the person who has it uses the label as an excuse, and refuses to stop contributing to it. We also don't want to pay for it if someone can control it, by quitting, whether it be alcohol or twinkies, or sunbathing with skin cancer, smoking with lung cancer, or, take your pick.

FireSprite

Very well stated!! This is exactly what my take-away from SR has been for the most part... I'm consistently struck by the similarities that exist across so many different groups of people from all walks of life. It really opened my eyes to read stories & perspectives here -not just from us F&F, but from RA's & A's as well, across all the forums.

Florence

Yes, and this is what allowed me to see him with some compassion and understanding over anger and bitterness. It wasn't about me. It wasn't really about him -- or who he is/was -- it was an unmanaged disease and everything was flowing from there. He didn't ask for it, and he seemed genuinely conflicted and guilty and awful about all the things that were going on. I fully believe it's a compulsion, and difficult to control.

That doesn't mean I have to live with it or tolerate it!

But I understand better now, and it makes me kinder for it.

OnawaMiniya

I like that. I've thought to myself,"if you eat poorly you may develop diabetes, but is eating poorly a Disease?" No doubt once you are diabetic you have a problem. But if eating poorly is going to be pathologized, what can't be pathologized? Is there a reason for every single thing we do? I believe there is. Whether that reason is good or bad, healthy or not, conscious or not. I worry that in my situation he would use it as an excuse. I see that in him. Others would not, they would take that label of disease to get serious about their health. For me it is two fold: does the label help or hurt, and how many things do we pathologize? I know it causes changes in the brain and decision making.

Whenever I drink, I become very very flushed in the face, ears, and hands. Upon looking that up, I see that some people metabolize alcohol differently, process it faster. It indicates that that is me. But I've never been an alcoholic and in fact I'm no fan really. It feels too "sloppy" if that makes sense.

See under "causes": Alcohol flush reaction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm quite Caucasian looking for the record, this does not only affect Asians. Who knows what's in my gene pool though. I recently found out I'm part Persian and part Turkish, I had no idea. Thought that was pretty cool to find out.

It states that though they metabolize faster, they may suffer more side effects. Before anyone says that's why I'm not an alcoholic, I'm not so sure, because a lot of alcoholics pay no mind to their health and how awful it makes them feel, not eating or drinking water.

I'm no doctor for sure and if course can't say ANYTHING with total certainty on the topic of disease or not. Just some interesting things.

OnawaMiniya

To be clear, I don't think anyone WANTS to be an alcoholic.

FireSprite

Absolutley! It's a "knowledge is power" thing for me.... I understand it better, have more awareness & can navigate dealing with it better using that knowledge.

It also gave me the freedom to feel OK about walking away from trying to control the situation & focusing on me & DD.... that freedom was HUGE for me, like an enormous weight lifted.

It doesn't excuse it or make it tolerable, not at all.

FireSprite

I understand what you all are saying about untreated alcoholism here, but I have a question. (I'm playing Devil's Advocate, I have no strong opinion one way or the other)

Can someone explain the difference between the disease vs. a lifestyle choice?

Isn't alcoholism as a disease triggered by the decision/choice to drink? So, are "they" saying that as a disease it simply stays dormant if never triggered?

So someone could (in theory) be an alcoholic biologically but if they never has so much as ONE drink, it nevers gets triggered to be active?

Or would that need still exist & need to be filled by other addictions: work, sex, food, etc?

Diabetes as a disease exists for many - but don't many also force themselves into the disease through continuous poor diet & lifestyle choices when they would otherwise be diabetes free? (as in they became diabetic by continually abusing their bodies & wearing down the organs affected but had they chosen a more responsible lifestyle, they would be unafflicted because the organs wouldn't have been abused?)

LexieCat

Just because (controllable) environmental factors contribute to a disease doesn't make it less of a disease. Sunbathing can cause skin cancer. Sunbathing is a "lifestyle choice."

I think we ALL do some things that are unhealthy. Some of us don't get enough exercise. Some of us eat junk food. Some of us engage in risky hobbies (skydiving, deep-sea diving, motorcycle riding). Some of us smoke. Some of us drink. Some of us use drugs.

Any of those things can cause disease processes or accidents. LIVING leads to death. One hundred percent mortality rate. Jack LaLanne eventually succumbed.

My own lifestyle choices undoubtedly contributed (heavily) to my alcoholism. Other lifestyle choices will probably shorten my life span, and maybe make me very sick at some point. Or maybe not. Some people drink, smoke, eat poorly, don't exercise, and seem to have nine lives, living to a very old age. I think all of this points to the fact that human beings react to environmental factors very differently, and what sickens one person will never faze another.

Jazzman

I can't explain it, but pretty sure I've seen it. My father was a nasty drunk but the more I think about it I don't think he was an born to be alcoholic. I think he just leaned on it and abused it. Was given the ultimatum to quit or move out my by Mother and damned if he didn't quit and stay quit. No AA or support groups. He never relapsed and was sober until the day he died.

M on the other hand was the type that (in the end) would start drinking and drink non stop until she passed out. The only way she would have stayed sober would be if she lived for ever after in a rehab center totally immersed in the fellowship 24x7.

My experience supports Lexies Diabetes analogy, I think?

FireSprite

Ok, so using Jazz's example: How does the father's affliction qualify as a disease if he was able to choose to abuse the alcohol OR choose to quit, unsupported by any means, medical/counseling/AA? Where is the component that qualifies it as a disease for him?

Whereas in his example, "M" could not make the same active choice of power/control over the addiction.

caboblanco

Declaring it a disease was a way to get insurance companies to cover treatment. I don't really think any reputable physician believes it is a disease but he/she may say it is just for that reason, so people can get help. The same goes for obesity. That was just declared a disease. Now people can get more help to treat their condition

FireSprite

FWIW - my own AF started drinking so early in life that by the time he started sobriety at age 34/35ish he could no longer remember when he started, what made him pick up his first drink or why it appealed to him at all.

His earliest memories of drinking were simply that he remembered dumping out his thermos before school in the morning & filling it with liquor from his dad's liquor cabinet & then he & his BFF sharing it while they walked to elementary school.


My RAH on the other hand had never been more than a social drinker throughout his life (barring those college drunk fest situations that many of us have had) and hated the idea of losing control so much that he actively avoided being drunk or using drugs for years. His abuse ramped up from casual/social to daily to excessive based on his own tolerance building and then turned the corner into abusive drinking because he was leaning on it to deal with everything else in his world that was crumbling: his business, the local economy, etc.

They both took very different avenues to alcoholism, but both identify as addicts.

DreamsofSerenity

I'm not sure diabetes is the best analogy. (My mom works with diabetics and also has type II diabetes so I know a little about it.)

Type II has a VERY strong proven genetic component to it. You see a lot of obese people without the gene who miraculously don't have diabetes. But if someone has the gene, it almost always gets turned on at some point, whether it is when they are pregnant, when/if they become overweight, or eventually, just with age.

I am not sure there is a genetic component to alcoholism. Isn't that debated? There are plenty of people walking around sober who had two alcoholic parents, but from what I know about diabetes, this would practically never happen.

My mom has such a strong family history of type II diabetes, that she developed it at age 65 despite the fact she was thin, exercised daily, and ate a perfectly balanced diet (regarding carb servings). So while it is totally true that many people with the gene develop the disease at younger ages because of obesity, in the elderly population, you still find tons of thin diabetics who never made poor lifestyle choices.

This is also unlike alcoholism as I understand it. I mean, could you become an alcoholic at age 65 drinking just one glass of wine a week?

I feel like addictive diseases are in a category entirely of their own. And I don't think doctors who don't specialize in them understand them for sh-t either. Up until about ten years ago my physician dad thought you couldn't become an addict if you had a high IQ. Granted he is 80 but still...

Sueski

Firesprite, I think some people need more support with lifestyle changes than others. Lots of people go to the gym and eat healthier to lose weight, but others need a trainer and Weight Watchers. I see your point, but I think it's pretty individual.

The obesity-as-disease development is interesting to me. I very much look forward to seeing how it affects healthcare. It's a huge (no pun) problem. I suspect physicians have as much variation in their opinions about the disease model as we do!

Florence

There is a large, growing body of science that shows alcoholism is genetic. It's not a matter of our personal feelings or opinions.

I don't know what is lost by acknowledging that alcoholism has a genetic, medical component. This is science, folks, not sorcery.