Terminally Unique

What does "fault" have to do with it? If you have a problem, you can either try to do something about it, or worry about where the blame lies. Regardless of whose fault it is, you can rest assured that if you don't take responsibility for your own problems, that no one is going to step in and solve them for you.

TheOnlyDryPaddy

And how is calling alcohol misuse a disease mot taking resposibility for your actions?

The AVRT users here seem to insist that designating something a disease absolves the affected from resposibility for their own self-care but don't seem to want to make the effort to make a reasoned connection between the two.

soberlicious

Fault, blame, etc can be very tricky. Not being at fault does not necessarily relieve one of responsibility.

TheOnlyDryPaddy

So how does calling something a disease absolve one from personal responsibility for self-care?

Terminally Unique

You specifically mentioned 'fault', Paddy, which is an attempt to lay the blame somewhere. What does 'fault' have to do with it? More importantly, perhaps, why does it concern you so much whose fault it is?

Speaking for myself, I don't believe it absolves anyone. Perhaps on some other planet, but not here on Earth. If you believe that calling your addiction a disease will make things easier for you in society, however, you may be in for a surprise. They've done studies, and it turns out that it increases the stigma.

soberlicious

Our posts crossed Paddy. I will not speak for AVRT users, as I can only speak for myself, but I have often heard irl and seen statements here that allude to the addict "not being able to help it" because they have a disease. Friends and family often say "they are just doing what addicts do...they're sick, they can't help it." If I looked I could find several examples all over this forum. I've deeply hurt others that I love, only to turn to them and say "it's not me, it's the disease". I believed it, felt sorry for myself, and also I thought it quite handy. It sure helped me continue to do whatever I damn well pleased at the expense of others for too long. I did not take responsibility for way too long. My children suffered because of that...and that's completely my fault. The disease theory had me fighting a lifelong battle with an illness that I could never recover from, not my "fault" just the disease I have. I don't think I have a disease or that I am deeply flawed. I was once addicted to alcohol and benzos and it nearly killed me. Now I don't use them and I never will. Easier than I was led to believe by the disease proponents.

GirlFromCO

I think because people sometimes use it as a way to give themselves permission to relapse. With AVRT there's no room for that.

GirlFromCO

Yeah, what Soberlicious said

TheOnlyDryPaddy

Maybe the idea that drinking is completely the choice of the drinker.

So does self-identifying as mentally ill, but that doesn't mean that people with mental illness don't have a disease.

Zencat

IMO depression is a disorder. Unlike a disease where a pathogen, be it a genetic or viral/bacterial can be, in a great many cases of diseases, traced to a most always organic cause.

Brain disorders often times when manifested in emotional or a cognitive causation can be a mix of organic
(brain structural/chemical rearrangement) through genetics and/or development maladjustment...trauma, maybe physical damage or emotional/ cognitive shock/abuse.

I think of a disease when there are specific symptom that follow in a course tissue degeneration that is generally much the same for all that are affected.

Alcoholism onset may be rapid or very lengthy in development. The symptoms may be masked by the individual making detection difficult. Try managing skin cancer in its latter stages...not likely, yet the alcoholic may be able to pull off work, be greatly mobile and higher functioning than a late stage skin cancer patient.

Diseases from what I know can be traced back to a very likely single cause. Alcoholism causation is many times manifest because of a great variety of experiences, personal history, distorted perceptions, family history and there is more causes that one can directly know.

soberlicious

I do believe that drinking is the choice of the drinker. Once a person has safely detoxed, the choice to drink or not is squarely on them.

Terminally Unique

I don't view my body's adaptation to the chronic exposure of alcohol as a disease, simply because it was a natural function of the human body. My body did what it had to do to keep me alive in spite of myself, and it would have done the same with arsenic or snake venom. I'm glad my body did this, because otherwise, I would have gone to the hereafter. If you want to cop a disease, though, knock yourself out.

TheOnlyDryPaddy

Your views have nothing to do with whether substance dependence is a disease.

I'm not sure what my relationship with alcohol is, so I'm not going to "cop to a disease". It's clear to me that I have a general lack of impulse control, and alcohol is by far the most destructive substance I consumed, so I quit consuming it.

Terminally Unique

That's certainly plausible, but they've been looking for "proof" that addiction is a brain disease for about 60 years now, and they're still looking. After countless billions of dollars, all NIDA has come up with is some pretty brain scan pictures which show that addicted people's brains light up like a Christmas tree when they see a beer.

I sure wouldn't want one of those brain scan machines hooked up to me when I saw a pretty woman walk by. The brain scan pictures would probably look very similar to the pictures when looking at a cold beer, and Nora Volkov might claim that I have a chronic disease which requires expensive, life-long 'treatment', and that I will never recover from it.

You quit drinking, but you're not sure what your relationship with alcohol is?

TheOnlyDryPaddy

Your blithe dismissal of neuroimaging speak volumes to ignorance of neuroscience in general and addiction medicine in particular. It's not just that the brain "light[s] up like a Christmas tree"; it's which parts of the brain light up when presented with a stimulus, so the fact that your brain lights when you see a hot guy doesn't necessarily means that you have sort of pathology.

As I said, I have general issues with impulse control, but I'm going to stop doing everything I have trouble controlling.

Terminally Unique

My blithe dismissal is not of neuro-imaging, Paddy, it is of addiction medicine misusing it to make it appear that they are getting closer to finding the disease that causes people to get drunk (and by inference, a treatment) in order to get more funding.

I bet more than a few would conclude that I have some sort of pathology if they saw my brain scan when I saw a hot guy. Some might say I have a brain disease, others might say I need years of psychology to root out those "underlying issues" (an overbearing mother, perhaps?), and yet others would just come out and say that I'm a sinner. I would send them all packing.

TheOnlyDryPaddy

You seem awfully certain of something that you have done nothing but deride. Perhaps if you could actually explain why neuroimaging doesn't support the conclusions of addiction medicine, it would be more convincing.

But the fact that you brain lights in response to a stimulus doesn't imply a pathology. My tongue-in-cheek example was not the best choice, but neuroimaging has been used to study basic brain functions such as language production and language comprehension.

Do you think those studies are junk science too?

Terminally Unique

It is normal to become addicted, a natural response. The body is doing what it is supposed to be doing in order to maintain homeoestasis. The phenomenon has been replicated across cultures, and even across species. It is also normal to become un-addicted. Hundreds of millions of people quit smoking cigarettes when they finally realized it wasn't worth it, for example.

Precisely. The fact that the brain lights up with desire when someone sees a beer doesn't imply a pathology.

No.

TheOnlyDryPaddy

I have a bachelors in biochemistry, so I know what homeostasis is, but thank you for the information.

However, addiction is not a normal response to consumption of a substance. Not everyone who heavily consumes "addictive" substances.

But neuroimaging can reliably distinguish psychopathology.

soberlicious

and? I would like to hear more about how this relates to addiction being a disease. Since my bachelors is only in elementary education, you may want to use smaller words and really large font.