Five

You have different concept of pride. I never really stomped on people. I might have been demanding and super senstitive - but I wasnt a great stomper.

I can understand the term "sick" in someplaces - i.e for chronic, near death alcoholisim. That is real SICK. But as a personality trait, which lingers in myself or others - I just see that as quietly demented.

eire rose

Hello Five,


You hit the nail on the head for me, I just had an issue at an aa meeting last night where I felt that certain people had me labeled as being "sick", all this talk of being sick and some are sicker than others. I am so angry this morning I can barely type.

My take on it is by calling yourself sick we are then victims. I am not sick in the slightest. I have a great job, physically fit, spiritual and healthly. Maybe unbalanced in certain areas and have issues with alcohol but does everyone not have some bull going on ?? My DOC just happens to be something that can be visable, how many people self medicate with other things, as a recovering alcoholic I and others have the opportunity to deal with this issue, we made a choice concious or not to stop the behaviour, thats pretty healthy in my book.


To be spiritualy void as being sick; for me I have always had some connection to a HP, that is what led me to this point in my life, my journey, now its time to get sober thats all, no sickness in that, just the next thing to do.

I guess I am rambling a bit but this sickness thing really irked me last night. This guy at the meeting has 12 yrs sober an people say he is sick, OK, well maybe he is not sick but that is how he lives his life, his vision, his way of being, acceptance might be more appropriate rather than the label of being sick. I really hate the labels alcoholic, sick etc.. I am getting carried away here so I'll end this post.

Anyway, Five I agree 100% with you,

Love Rose

Five

has anyone missed my glaring contradiction. Its right there. Read back.

First one to spot it gets a mineral water on the house. Begins with "D".

Just when I thought I was onto something.

Five

You've just articulated my experience, almost entirely, with AA.

Dont let the sickies get you down. Your HP sounds as if he knows the score.

Dan

Don't you hate it when that happens? One minute, you feel enlightened, and the next... Poof. Out the window it goes...

I only drink San Pellegrino.
Perrier, if that's all you can manage.

Magichappens

Many people who use and abuse alcohol are not alcoholic. If that's the case, quit drinking and all will get better. As I understand the description of a real alcoholic, they stop drinking and things get worse. They become a wreck. In order to be ok, they drink again, or accept help from a higher power. They have an illness.

If you are convinced you don't have an illness, what is the big deal? Some do, some don't. You are the only one who can decide that. You don't have to convince anyone else. They can't make you something you're not. Is it so important what others think of you? If someone calls you green, does that make you green? Would it offend you? Would you give it a lot of weight? You are free to be exactly who you are, and no one can change that. Hugs, Magic

Greenbug

It really is amusing when people get all caught up with the "words" and looking past what the real meaning is. The essence of a word, like God or Sick. Is it figuratively or literally?. When I say God is it the Christian God or the Jewish God and why does it have to be a well known God? To address these people I use "higher power".....

LOL

As long as you move forward in recovery. Whatever your comfortable with. Tomato - Tomauto? Whatever does it for you.

Simple program for complicated people.....

~GB

Main Entry: sick
Pronunciation: <TT>'sik</TT>
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English sek, sik, from Old English sEoc; akin to Old High German sioh sick
1 a (1) : affected with disease or ill health : AILING (2) : of, relating to, or intended for use in sickness <sick pay> QUEASY, NAUSEATED[/b] <sick to one's stomach> <WAS sick in the car> c : undergoing menstruation
2 : spiritually or morally unsound or corrupt
3 a : sickened by strong emotion <sick with fear> <WORRIED sick> b : having a strong distaste from surfeit : SATIATED <sick of flattery> c : filled with disgust or chagrin <GOSSIP sick> d : depressed and longing for something <sick for one's home>
4 a : mentally or emotionally unsound or disordered : MORBID <sick thoughts> b : MACABRE, SADISTIC <sick jokes>
5 : lacking vigor : SICKLY: as a : badly outclassed <LOOKED sick in the contest> b : incapable of yielding a profitable crop especially because of buildup of disease organisms <CLOVER-sick soils>
- sick·ly adverb

Autumn

bartender129

I don’t think I have ever seen a disease concept thread that the old “paste the definition from the online dictionary” trick isn’t used at least once…lol.

Was I / am I sick? Perhaps not in the classic sense, but I sure did have the propensity for some unhealthy choices. I make healthy choices now so if I was sick, I am now getting better.

I believe I had a maladaptive behavior pattern rather than a sickness and certainly not a disease. Even the AMA definition that the “disease camp” falls back on calls alcoholism a disorder, not a disease, for the most part anyway.

What I do know is that I wasted way too many of the precious moments of time I have on this earth coming to and defending that conclusion.

Bottom line my feeling on this subject now has turned into a big “fugedaboudit.”

It isn’t so much what I have, it is what I do about it.

Greenbug

My feelings exactly, I saw no one had done this yet so I did. I mean it is somewhat appropriate since it is about a "word"

I love it, thats right Autumn get the popcorn!,

so now the "word" in question is "decease" - oh this gets better all the time.

Main Entry: de·cease
Pronunciation: <TT>di-'sEs</TT>
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English deces, from Middle French, from Latin decessus departure, death, from decedere to depart, die, from de- + cedere to go
: departure from life : DEATH
- decease intransitive verb

The AMA would surely like to say "disorder" since the remedy has less to do with the medical association and more the individual. This was a transfer od power from the Medicine side to the psychological side "disorder" Makes sense to me....Either way it will cause a "departure from life" so its also a decease...


Is the new "word" "disorder"?

Main Entry: <SUP>1</SUP>dis·or·der
Pronunciation: <TT>(")di-'sor-d&r, -'zor-</TT>
Function: transitive verb
1 : to disturb the order of
2 : to disturb the regular or normal functions of


ROFLMAO!!!!


+5

nocellphone

Well, I'm sick (at least my thinking is).

If I weren't, I wouldn't need to heal.

Taiman

Five if you don't like the terms sick and alcoholic don't use them. I know some people wear the term alcoholic like a badge of honour but not me, you will find the world feels differently about it. That doesn't mean that you should feel shame however.

I am not a fan of the disease model of alcoholism, I know it is accepted by the AMA and most of the people in the addictions field. I do believe in the phenomena of craving however.

You may not be sick BUT you have been putting a poison into your body for many years ( I am guessing or you wouldn't be here). That poison has affected how you have lived your life and the decisions you have made and most likely your health.

I think physical and emotion recovery is a process no matter what term you use. Once you decide to quit drinking it is important to address your whole health and the areas of your life that you have neglected. I personally am a fan of thought and behaviour modification. NLP is quite interesting.

I don't believe that alcoholics or problem drinkers share one personality like many do. However on the flip side I have met many newly sober alcoholics who were emotionally well adjusted. So consider that you may have some work to do in that area.

Five

Excepted I use the word "sick" when I first got into recovery. But I do feel that the recovery community has stretched the word to mean a kind of deep personality thingy.

The times I have heard things like this:

O, I was talking to a girl and I felt nervous. Man I am SICK.

No your not mate, your just shy.

Anyway, I have resolved my "sick issues" the day I walked out of AA, and my life has improved. And isnt that what sharing in recovery is all about? What works?

Cap3

Oh my you perfer the words,quietly demented rather than sick?,ooooh,,that word hit my ego,big time...lol.
ahe, sticks and stone will break my bones.But nanes will never hurt me.Unless,i allow the words to be hurtful to me.Like i did with the word demented..My choice,i could have brushed it off,or done something differently with this word.,,,smile....
The differences is what makes the world go round and round.
aint it great!!!!!!!!

Brookie

I'm trying to simplify things myself these days. I don't care if I'm sick, diseased, alergic, or ugly as a warthog. Doesn't matter for today. I'm just trying to make it through the day without taking a drink.

When I got here, the answer to those questions seemed pretty important. I failed to stay sober, probably in part because I decided I didn't think I was "sick" and therefore it was OK to go out and drink some more. At this point in the process, I do think it's important for me to understand and reflect on why I want to stay sober, but whether there's a sickness underlying it seems irrelevant as long as I accept the fact that I'll maintain the same (or worse) drinking patters as long as I keep drinking.

Greenbug

I am all of the above.


Fine: Whatever works is exactly right.

If AA doesnt do it find something that does.

~GB

Autumn

I suppose one could go any which way with this one.

To me, sick (as applies to addiction) = mentally ill. While drinking/using, and even while recovering, we did/do things that would qualify as things only the mentally ill would do.

I would like to just adopt the term "condition", however, addiction is much like a disease in remission.

Lots of food for thought on this thread, anyhow.

I bet most of the long-time posters on this forum are tired of debating it!

Autumn

I think that old man in Five's avatar is Taiman.

chris k

Millwall,I mean five, I see you still like to stir the pot. It keeps everyone on their toes. Have a nice day.

ODAT

There's a tradition that reads...

a) We MUST call ourselves alcoholic, sick, perverse, (demented) to be a member.

b) The only requirement for membership is that others will call us sick and we want to drink but will get thrown out, sent to jail, or whatever if we do. We must accept everything that everybody around the table says as Gods honest truth and we must do everything that everybody else does, including wearing the same coloured hat.

c) The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.

If you answered this with a) or b) then either you're in the wrong program, or I misread the traditions and I am in the wrong room. To be blunt, there is nowhere in the actual program where it says that we must call ourselves alcoholic, sick or any of the like--we simply need to have a desire to stop drinking. Even in the first step we don't have to say "I was an alcoholic" (note noun), but "We were alcoholic and our lives had become unmanagable".

Problem with words is that there are so many perceived meanings for each and every word nowadays and many don't mean the dictionary terms when they use words--half the problem with simple communication is that someone says toma(e)to and another says tomato.

I always had a problem with labels. Feminist for example can draw a picture of a ball-bashing biatch who chews tobacco and demands that all men be hung, drawn and quartered or it can simply mean a person who wants equal treatment in the workforce and can draw quite different responses from different people. Alcoholic is like that too. When I hear the word "alcoholic" in the singular term the picture that typically comes to mind is one of the guy wearing the smelly, holey trench-coat asleep on the bench under the bridge clutching his brown paper bag with the bottle of whiskey or mouthwash in his hands. Yet, when I hear it in the sentence "we were alcoholic" I get a different picture--one of a dysfunctional family and the word 'alcoholic' denoting everybody in that family regardless of whether they drink or not. Heck, even the cat is alcoholic because he's learned how to respond carefully to the alcoholic and knows intuitively how to hide and such in response to the one who drinks.

And yes, I can complicate the crap outa anything.

I'm not gonna argue about whether alcoholism is a sickness or not. I'm alcoholic/co-dependant/whateveryouwannacallit but I don't have the sniffles, I've only ever thrown up once from drinking too much, never had a black-out, can't really relate to the "I used to drink 99 beers in an evening" type of story, yet I'm certainly alcoholic in my way of thinking. I've been told and I've experienced a simple fact. If I go to meetings and listen to everything with an ear to disagree, I will disagree. And, I'm certainly good at that. I'm very arguementative you see and I'm also very intellectual so I can intellectualize and argue my way around everything that is said in any meeting. Can argue my way out of never going back to those stupid, dumb meetings where everyone just sits around and says "I was sick, but now I'm better--I hit my wife today, pee'd on the cat, pushed my 3 year old kid out on the street, but I'M BETTER and today was a success because I didn't drink today!!!!!" or I can listen to that guy, push the arguements aside and then hear the next guy (sometimes the only one) who talks about how he stayed dry for 20 years before finding recovery and now he's not so angry, bitter or critical. Its my choice. But, one thing I've noticed is that if I'm listening to disagree, I will hear things I disagree with and I will disagree. If I'm listening to learn and to relate, I will hear the things I can relate to and learn from. Its all my choice.

I've also noticed that my days go alot better when I'm listening to relate and learn than when I'm listening to be critical and to disagree.

To anyone I would suggest they listen with an open ear and an open mind because thats what works for me. If you're different, then thats fine--do what works for you.

It seems sort of counter-productive though to get into a big kafuffle over the word 'sick' and a little ironic that this is infact one of tendancies that point towards the 'sickness'. Perhaps its just my way of thinking, but it seems kind of moot anyways.