Disease...
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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Originally Posted by TheOnlyDryPaddy
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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Originally Posted by TheOnlyDryPaddy
Maybe the idea that drinking is completely the choice of the drinker.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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 beer pictures, and Nora Volkov might claim I have a disease that requires expensive, life-long 'treatment', and that I will never recover from it.
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 beer pictures, and Nora Volkov might claim I have a disease that requires expensive, life-long 'treatment', and that I will never recover from it.
As I said, I have general issues with impulse control, but I'm going to stop doing everything I have trouble controlling.
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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.

Do you think those studies are junk science too?
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No.
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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.

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.
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But neuroimaging can reliably distinguish psychopathology.
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