Alcoholism - a disease or a choice?

by Sirona 93 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  BrendaCloutier

  As Mulan suggested, there are 2 types of alcoholics.

  There are also 2 types of diabetics:

  Juvinile Diabetes - type 1, onset early in life, often as a child, usually requiring insuling early on.

  Adult Onset Diabetes - type 2, heredity factors into it but diet can control the onset. Obesity, alcohol, sugar, starch and other foods abuse are high factors.

  Have you ever seen a pre-diagnosis, or early diagnosed diabetic try to control their "bad foods" intake, i.e. sugar/starch foods? Have you ever seen them "bad food" binge? Have you ever seen their personality change during the process? Have you ever seen a diabetic pass out, act drunk, or not remember what they did?

  I have.

  When my dad was in early diagonosis. It took him 2 or 3 years to stablize.

  It is very much like alcoholism, in so many ways.

  But like an earlier statement, we yell at the alcoholic, but we don't yell at anyone with another disease.

  Ross, excellent statement about no excuse for saving up your "normal" alcohol units for consumption on Friday Night!

  Binge drinking is another form of "control" an alcoholic uses. "Im not gonna drink during the work week" but Fr night rolls round and "all bets are off" for the weekend.
• 

  minimus

  I think it is a disease but you do have a choice as to whether you will drink or not.
• 

  Mighty Mike

  Drinking is a choice even if it is because mom or dad did drink. The idea that someone is born with a gene or otherwise that would make one be a drinker is nonsense. A person picks it up, because again mom or dad as we have observed did likewise, or friends who drink offer it and make it appealing, or curiosity. Responsibility for it lies with us, it is funny how AA will seek to have us become responsible for our actions but not for picking up the drink and indulging.

  Mike
• 

  Doubtfully Yours

  Just like a biabetic can choose to follow a diet that will help him control his ailment, an alcoholic can choose not to drink in order to keep his ailment under control.

  DY
• 

  Country Girl

  I'd have to say both.
• 

  doogie

  mike:

  The idea that someone is born with a gene or otherwise that would make one be a drinker is nonsense.

  do you have any studies or references that show this? because there is a mountain of evidence that says otherwise.
• 

  hamsterbait

  I know someone whose husband got suicidally depressed if he could not cross dress. He tried to change, but ended up killing himself.

  I knew an alcoholic whose family 'intervened', and he managed to stop drinking, but now there was just HIMSELF and he couldn't cope so killed himself.

  Mulan is right. One form of alcoholism is a mental illness, I think related to lack of self esteem or some other issue in the psyche. I thought I became an alcoholic to cope with the stresses of JW and the contradictions that screamed louder and louder. Part of it was that WTS undermines the self esteem so much that some will not be able to accept themselves.

  After I woke up, I was still slowly killing myself, and eventually realised it was other mental issues that I could not cope with. Since I got therapy, and self esteem and self respect, I now find I don't feel the same compulsion to drink, as Eric Berne says - a truly cured alcoholic does not got from one extreme to the other. In fact TA was effectively helping so many on a government project the transactional analysis was stopped, as the workers had no one to play their games of rescue with.

  Physical addiction to alcohol is more insidious. In France where wine forms part of every meal it is estimated that as many as 60% are addicted to alcohol and don't realise it. Once the physical need is there it is as hard to cure as heroin or crack or cigarettes.

  How many who just posted about choice and self control and the 'alcoholics responsibility' were sucking poisonous smoke from a cancer stick even as they typed?

  HB
• 

  ballistic

  Sirona I think it can be even more complicated than "are they responsible for it or not". Some people find out by accident that they can self-medicate for anxiety or depression with alcohol, and then find themselves addicted to alcohol. So the "illness" is not actually the alcoholism, but an underlying one, and the alcoholism can be secondary.
• 

  love2Bworldly

  Just wanted to add my 2 cents. I tend to agree with Mary, that there are certain people who have 'addictive' personalities who have a predisposal to turn toward an addictive substance when searching for comfort. People can have an addiction to many things--food, alcohol, drugs, sex, cigarettes, and I'm sure there are others.

  I don't buy into alcoholism being a 'disease' even if doctors call it that; then you would have to call other addictions 'diseases'. The medical opinions change every year and man's understanding of things is constantly changing. I don't hear people calling drug addiction a 'disease', to me it's very similiar to alcohol addiction.
• 

  BrendaCloutier

  The idea that someone is born with a gene or otherwise that would make one be a drinker is nonsense

  Epilepsy was once considered to be demonic possession.

  Just because you believe something to be true, doesn't make it so.

  =========================

  Choice.
  Even that alcoholic has a choice as to if, how, when, they will take care of their disease.
  Just as a diabetic has choices as to if, how, when, they will take care of their disease.

  I made a choice to address my alcoholism. First by attending AA. But AA didn't work for me. You see I wanted results faster. I didn't want to WORK the program of recovery. Besides. What's Gawd have to do with it?

  After 3 years of fussing with my alcoholism, in and out of AA, drinking because that's what alcoholics do; then finally, getting an awesome job and realizing that it might be my last hope of being a productive person, I checked into a treatment center (with the blessing of my employer). That was in May, 1990.

  I can't say I've been sober ever since 1990. April 26, 1997, in the death-throes of my marriage (#3) I came out of an emotional blackout trying to down a bottle of Everclear. mmMMMmmm good stuff. Well that, along with some normal alcoholism crap I don't want to discuss here, put me in the hospital with a .160 alcohol level.

  I can say I've been sober ever since that night, and if it wasn't for the 7 years 11 months and 3 weeks I had working THE program of Alcoholics Anonomous, I would not have been able to throw that Everclear bottle across the room, and not take a drink again.

  It certainly isn't because I don't want to drink. On occasion, usually when I'm in a great deal of physical pain and have been for a while (I have a chronic pain issue) I want to drink. I want to get shit-faced drunk. I want the pain to go away, and with alcohol it will for a while. But by Gawd I know if I do that once, I won't be able to stop and it WILL kill me.