Alcoholism is not a disease. It is a symptom of a personality trait/potential problem. Calling it a disease is a societal problem. Its a method for people to escape personal responsibility. I dare you to tell someone who has recovered from cancer, that someone recovering from alcoholism is in the same boat that they’re in. Wether or not it is a valid ‘moral’ reason for divorce would be entirely up to the people involved. Morals are relative afterall.
which is why for the purposes of this debate they were defined.
The potential for addiction is a disease, though. It’s not a disease like cancer, but more along the lines of oh, say clinical depression or obsessive compulsive disorder. It’s a mental illness, then, rather than a physical, but it’s still there.
I think I am correct in stating that a person could exhibit every single “sympton” identified in the definition I cited and still be doing nothing more than slowly dying (and aren’t we all doing that any way?).
For example, one could:
drink only light beer every evening at home (narrowing of the drinking repertoire (involving the establishment of daily drinking patterns and selective choices of alcoholic beverages))
prefer social settings where alcohol is present (salience of alcohol-seeking behavior)
be capable of drinking 6 plus beers with little visible effect (increased tolerance to alcohol’s effects)
suffer the day with a dry mouth and queasy stomach (repeated withdrawal symptoms)
crack a beer at 5:00 pm (drinking to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms)
understand that he “needs” a drink (subjective awareness of a compulsion to drink)
resume drinking immediately after recovering from a cold, going off medication, etc. (reinstatement of established drinking patterns following a period of abstinence)
yet never be cross or endanger others.
I don’t intend this to be an apology for alcoholism, hardly. I am curious in the morality* of divorcing a diseased for his or her disease alone and in divorcing alcoholism in general from the destructive behavior that often accompanies it.
and to Thudlow Boink’s
I ask you to substitute cancer patient for alcoholic and cancer for alcoholism. Does it really “make a difference”?
in light of Guinastasia’s post, with which I think I agree, make that:
manic depresive -> alcoholic
manic depression -> alcoholism
side note: when typing his/her name the first time, I wrote Guinesstasia. Paging Dr. Freud.
I don’t claim to have an answer to the OP, but I submit that it is arguable that it is immoral to NOT divorce an alcoholic, as you may be preventing him/her from hitting bottom and seeking help.
Why would anyone want to divorce a loved one because of the alcoholism unless there are questions about negative behaviors that stem from the alcoholism? For example, if the parent is an alcoholic, will she or he make a reliable child care provider? Will she or he pass out every night or disappear into a bottle of booze? Will she or he drive with the child in the car while intoxicated?
If there are no alcohol-related negative behaviors, I suppose that a fundamentalist could object to the presence of alcohol in the house. I would think that most fundamentalists would object to divorce even more though.
BTW, alcoholism is also a physical disease – and I’m not speaking of just the related diseases that are caused by the consumption of alcohol over time. The husband of a friend died during surgery from alcohol withdrawal. His death wasn’t all in his head.
Well, to be fair, the withdrawal isn’t caused by alcoholism in and of itself, but the damage that booze does to your body over time.
I understand what you’re saying-my godmother and favorite aunt died as a result of years of alcohol abuse. (The really upsetting thing was she had just started going to AA, was sober, and happier than she had been in a long time. Then she got sick and because her body was only just starting to heal, it killed her.)
I’m just pointing out that just because something isn’t something we can test for, like diabetes or cancer, doesn’t mean it’s not a “real disease”.
They are not. Cancer is more lethal, but can sometimes be eliminated. Alcoholism is permanent.
In my small experience with 12-step groups, I have picked up:
-
It may be a pre-disposition that you are additcted to ____________.
-
Now you have to decide what to do with this situation.
I think this is a realistic approach. Adults try to fix the problem. All day I deal with high school students, some of whom try to just blame the problem for the outcome: “I couldn’t find my binder, so I couldn’t take notes”.
Stout fellow! 
Brilliant!