piove

I believe that alcoholism is a disease, and I have no problem in calling myself an alcoholic.
However it is only in the domain of addiction that "addict" and "alcoholic" are labels used to define the whole person. In support groups for different types of diseases , members don't say: my name is John and I am a diabetic, an asthmatic, a neoplastic, a bipolar, a ****** etc
Maybe some people are challenging that "label" not because they are trying to minimize the problem, but because they feel that it reduces the human being too much
I also understand why people affected by somebody else's alcoholism
don't want to change the status quo because they may be afraid that it will give a "free pass" to the person who causes them so much suffering
In regards to the first step, I apply it to pretty much everything external to me, alcohol, people, events, whatever. It is really freeing to recognize that the illusion of control was just an illusion. Then I can really focus on what I have some power over> myself, and what defines me as "me"> my feelings, my thoughts, my beliefs, my actions.
It all comes down to the serenity prayer, with or without God

PohsFriend

Could not agree more with this and the steps have nothing to do with alcohol, they have to do with keeping you sane. In a very good step-study meeting I attended a couple weeks ago I listened to an alcoholic who is a friend of my beloved & recovered alcoholic wife as she described the two parts of alcoholism as the allergy and the obsession. I think it's a good description for those who think alcoholism is not a disease. If you are allergic to shellfish and eat a bowl of shrimp you can't use will power to prevent the hives and other effects. Likewise an alcoholic is unable to control what happens when they start drinking.

AA does nothing to attenuate or remove that allergy, NOTHING.

What AA deals with is the 'obsession'. The things that drive them to that first sip and the far-too-common-to-be-******** crazy notion that 'Next time will be different' or 'I can drink like a normal person again'.

I watched the program transform my wife from the pitiful creature who spent two weeks in the hospital after an attempt to quit 'cold turkey' resulted in a seizure and heart failure followed by two weeks in the hospital to the devoted mother, loving wife and woman of character and integrity who gets her 3 year chip next month.

I assure you, alcoholism is a disease not a self-inflicted label just like Diabetic. I did not see that 4 years ago, I thought "Oh horsesh1t, if you lose control after the first drink then don't have the first drink but get off the 'disease' excuse!".

I was wrong. I thought AA was self-defeating. I listened to speakers with 20 years of sobriety thinking "WTF? It's been 20 years, you are cured, you can quit calling yourself names and go home!". One of those speakers is my wife's sponsor's sponsor's sponsor. She has an annual get together of all the folks sponsored by her or her sponsees and its a few hundred women (like Amway, but no sales pitch). I asked her about it because it bothered me, I thought my wife was labelling herself unfairly too. She said "You don't understand. AA doesn't keep me from drinking, it keeps me sane. When I am sane I have no desire to drink". Same lady was talking to my wife recently about my finally getting into al-anon and my wife was complaining that the program would benefit anyone so it sucks that she has to do 4-5 meetings and all the work every day to improve herself but others don't. That wise veteran put an arm around my wife and said "Sure sweety, but the difference is that if they don't do this they will still survive, we won't". Seems a tad dramatic to those who were not at the two funerals we went to recently of those who couldn't stay sober but I now understand the term 'Grateful Alcoholic'. I'm married to one and AA changed her life and mine, and our son's as she progressed.

Sorry to ramble but you reminded me of how I thought and felt about that label three years ago and how much my view has been changed and how much humility got beaten into me when I thought we were 'different'.

I also think it's AWESOME that you love your wife and are sensitive to that which makes her feel bad and try to build her up. We can't keep an alcoholic from drinking but when one is trying to get well we can provide an environment with as little chaos as possible, without judgment and shame and without excusing or enabling drinking. That's a tightrope walk at times but it can be done :-)

One word choice I do take issue with is 'recovering' vs 'recovered'. As far as I am concerned my wife is recovered. That does not mean she is cured. If she drinks again she will inevitably wind up circling the drain again but she is not sick at the moment. I had Cancer 7 years ago and it is gone, I am cured and have recovered. If it comes back it will not be the same cancer (seein as how the original is in a jar in a lab) but I am recovered. I have had the 'flu' many times in 45 years and I have recovered each time so far... will still get my shot this year and hope it works better than last year's.

Sorry, throwing a lot your way but it is a topic I have obsessed over for a few years now and it took me time to learn to separate the disease I hate from the woman I love and understand that the real danger starts as soon as her fear of drinking eases. They say that alcohol is cunning and baffling and I believe that too. I've talked to folks who just got their second 5 or ten year chip because after ten years of sobriety they figured they could drink like a normal person. Whoooops.

I hope you try al-anon and give it at least 6 meetings before deciding whether it works for you. I just buried all the stress and fear for four years and like holding a beach ball under water it is going to come out eventually and for me it came out as a pretty nasty case of depression and anxiety that nearly wrecked my life completely. Fortunately, I'd seen someone start from a worse place and get to a much better one so I had a map - and her support. LOL, funny thing happens if you're fortunate enough to have your alcoholic get into AA and really work at it for a while. One day you wake up and discover that they are the sane one :-)

Gravedigger

I apreciate your response but however I do disagree we are all the same I suppose if I were to say we are all the same sounds less aggressive as pin pointing differences between alcoholics and non alcoholics, I guess the best way to explain what is important here is that the concentration on the labeling is not where our concentration should be, it should be in the healing process, if I was to call my wife an alcoholic, the cultural conditioning we have all been exposed to over many years causes us to associate a negative connotation to the person we are calling an alcoholic ( non productive in establishing a positive personal core belief). However very productive on validating already established negative core beliefs. This is where in AA I believe we fail, if I walk in to a meeting and I tell my story, stories over and over and over again this is validation of my negative core beliefs, if I introduce myself and proclaim I am an alcoholic everyday I again validate and solidify some more negative core beliefs. This remInds me of an experience, I was at an attitudinal healing function and meet some really awesome people and heard about there life struggles and this was a very huge turning point in my recovery process, almost like I was in a dark room and a light came on. I listened to two paticular stories that went like this. One gentleman told us about the wealth in dollars that he had accumulated from working 16 hour days for the last 10 years of his life and that he could provide his family with what ever they needed however his wife left him and he has no relationship with his three children, because he choose a path of working day after day 16 hours and more sometimes so he could provide his family with what he thought they needed.
Than a few more people spoke and shared there stories, and than another gentleman came up to speak, tattered clothes, not very well groomed, teamed of booze, here's is the small scale of his story. He had three children he has no contact with and a wife that has left him they had a home and a family life but as the years went on his drinking made it really challenging for him to have a peaceful loving family life and good relationships with his wife and children.
So afterwards through the healing work done at this workshop I was situated in the same group as the wealthy man and the man that smelt like booze.(also attended AA for 12 years).

And through the group work (11 of us). Our task was to try to figure out what our negative core beliefs were, to make a living by story shorty the man with great financial wealth and the homeless man, that had the family that left him because of his drinking, had the exact same negative core belief of worthlessness, hears the real kicker this wS the instance that made it so clear to me that we are all the same even alcoholics and non alcoholics are no different than each other. Both of these men had early childhood experiences that cause them to construct a negative self belief about them selfs and continued on in life to pursue happiness and peace, however they hadent found it because they were trying to validate there negative core belief of worthlessness, one destroyed his family with wealth and working 16 hour days and the other destroyed his family with poverty and alcohol, so through their lives the negative core belief they had of them selves was they felt like they were worthless and while the wealthy person filled his live with an abundance of wealth it was actually his negative core belief that eventually sent him down the road of being alone and feeling worthless (Validated). The homeless man pursued a path that sent him to the exact same place no wife no family and feeling worthless( Validated). This experience is what has brought me to believe we are all the same and we are all driven to do what we do based on a belief system we created when we were young children that wasent necessarily true.(usually from emotional neglect, or abuse of sometype). This is why I believe that in my wife's case and every other "alcoholic" out there your drinking is just a symptom of a negative belief you have about yourself. Seek out the negative core beliefs you have and eradicate them, than create new ones, I believe if you do this work your recovery will be tenfold. I believe this because I have seen these two men transform and it was from this work that transformed them not AA not Workaholics anonymous. But from healing the inner self of neglect an abuse they endured at an early age. We are all different when I t is about our physical appearance but internally we area the exact same. I really hope this post sheds some light on someone's day:
Live well and love always.

TidyTeal

I feel the simple answer is the "label" is there because doctors, insurance companies NEED this as a starting point to provide services now a days.
Used to be it was just a derogatory name, but now it's actually helpful in getting the person resources to help.

You can get all philosophical about it, but you seem to be having trouble reconciling the word alchoholic within yourself. Cool you are bouncing your ideas off everyone else!! But the issue isn't about right or wrong, it's only about what works for people as individuals.

I reduce things to "does this serve me?" Does it not?
( in remaining in a healthy living context)
The rest is just lipstick on a pig.
KISS = Keep it Simple Stupid
Something a dear friend & AA sponsor used to tell me....still makes me smile!!

Of course there is other collateral healing to do, everyone has issues. This issues would be there without the alcohol, tho they are compounded by it. Naming isn't necessarily Shaming. You can't fix what you can't identify. Like it or not "words" are what we have, the english language is what it is, and, again, dressing it up, prettying it up doesn't change any of it. It also doesn't make us as humans "less than". We can't control how society or others see us.

Doesn't matter if we were damaged as kids, damaged as adults or did self-damage....doesn't actually matter what name it has other than that name leads us to the correct info on healing it. JMO

redatlanta

I appreciate your observation based on two people that you then blanket to the entire population of the world. LOL.

Dude, there has been much research regarding why someone is an alcoholic. Some believe it is genetic, some believe it is an allergy, some believe (as you) that it comes from trauma resulting in a negative belief about yourself. How many theories there are I can't count.

The truth is that all answers are right and wrong at the same time - each individual person might be able to pinpoint why. I wonder why I am not an alcoholic and my husband is. Or, why he is an alcoholic and his brother is not. Or why he is alcoholic and his parents are not.

In truth I don't wonder. My husband is bi-polar. Guessing he has been since his early 20's (that's his determination). Not diagnosed until 48 years old. That's probably the most common issue we find (I think) is mental illness, or a personality disorder, and self medication.

TidyTeal is correct, dressing it up is just lipstick on a pig. My husband is not shamed by the label of alcoholic, why should he be? its no different than saying I am diabetic. Yes, there are shamers out there, but that's their problem not ours. We don't care what people think, and honestly when most find out he is they are supportive and complimentary, often inquisitive. Sometimes admit they have a problem, or are dealing with someone who does. Addiction is just addiction no matter what you call it and the reasons one is or is not are not all the same.