No, I disagree. When the person is drunk, his decisions are under the influence of an intoxicating substance. But he was not under the influence when he made the decision to have that first drink. That was a conscious decision he made while sober.
If a mentally ill person quits taking their meds and commits a crime, they are still subject to criminal prosecution. If the legal system believes that the disease caused the actions, there is the option of involuntarily committing the person to a hospital until “cured”, then to prison to finish any remainder of the sentence. Perhaps something similar would work for DUI? Sentence of X time incarcerated, at least Y portion to be spent in custodial rehab.
Exactly!
(emphasis added) But that is more question begging. The disease concept means that he did not make a free, conscious choice to start drinking.
It seems like you are saying that alcoholism is 1/2 of a disease. How can a person with a mental disorder be “responsible” for recognizing that disorder?
As to your second point, alcoholism can hurt someone in ways that require civil commitment that I mentioned above. As far as “hurting” a loved one in the way that they have to take care of you or are upset by seeing you that way, its the same as cancer or paralysis, UNLESS one thinks it is simply a matter of choice.
I think the question of control misses part of the problem, because the whole pattern of making a horrible choice to drink is a product of the disease as well as a cause of the next round of symptomatic behavior. It’s very much an issue that alcohol and withdrawal directly mess with the decision making organ in your body.
As to whether this amounts to some kind of excuse for alcoholics to ignore the law, well, does it matter? Being an active alcoholic is hell as it is. I think it’s best for all concerned to let the law come down on alcoholics such that the legal consequences get thrown onto the hellish stack that is already pressuring the alcoholic. Some eventually find their own bottom and climb back up to the world of the living somehow. Others die. If there was a better cure, one that was compassionate like the treatments for most diseases are, that would be really nice. If.
It’s a disease you can get yelled at for having.
I don’t think we should be pissed off, especially, at alcoholics. But the ones that mess up too badly should face jail or whatever, like everybody else who does whatever they did. It should evoke pity, not fury, though.
The comments about it having been a choice to try alcohol in the very first place are probably mostly invalid. Any commenter who has ever tried even a single drink has no right to poke at anybody else for doing so.
Sober 27 years, by the way.
If one insists on calling alcoholism a disease, can I insist you put the words “self-inflicted” before it?
That brings us to the problem I had with Alcoholics Anonymous. It is based on the premise that drinking is a sin. The 12 steps are based on that premise though they sing the song that it is a disease.
Yes, he did. When he was sober, he made the (sober) decision to take the first drink of the day, knowing it would lead to more. And if he drove to a bar to take that first drink, he knew before he was impaired that he had to get home again, that he’d likely be drunk and therefor impaired. He could indulge his addiction in his own living room, not endangering anyone but himself. He made the choice to go out.
StG
Depends on how much one smokes.
You might want to look up some recidivism rates. Don’t got to AA for the data, though.
Oo! Here’s a good one: http://www.soberforever.net/currenttreatdoesnt.cfm
All treatment programs incl AA found to have around 3% success rate.
But at some point, it was a choice. Or a failure to remove a choice.
For example, if you hired someone to follow you around and that person’s only job was to prevent you from drinking, that’d probably stop the drinking, right?
Or let’s say you choose to live in a locked room in a monastery surrounded by monks who will never allow you to drink.
These are both conscious decisions that can absolutely 100% prevent drinking. Of course, they’re a little extreme and I’m not sure I’d recommend them until everything else has failed. But if I’m talking to that guy with five DUIs who’s ruined everything in his life, I’m going to start thinking he’s just not that committed to taking care of his disease if he continues to live in places where he has alcohol.
See, I’m not denying that the disease might control someone’s behavior to a significant degree. But this doesn’t completely absolve them from any moral responsibility.
In fact, let’s think about that wheel-chair bound person again. Let’s tell him “If you only do these three very difficult things, you’ll walk again.” If that person responds with “Oh, but that would be so inconvenient. It’s too much work. I don’t want to.” isn’t it fair to call THAT a moral failing? It’s now a choice, and the person has decided that being wheelchair bound is preferable to curing the disease. Their failing is not the disease itself, it’s just basically laziness because they won’t do what’s required to fix it. At some point, that’s the same failing that I’ll ascribe to an alcoholic.
They hired a lotta people to keep Betty Ford from getting drunk at one point, and she drank her fucking hairspray.
(may be apocryphal, but makes the point)
That’s a site for another rehabilitation program. So their figures on the effectiveness of AA might be biased.
Look further if you like but pretty much any addiction counselor will tell that 3% is the general effectiveness rate.
This is basically what it comes down to. Something can only be a moral failure if it’s a choice. A quadriplegic obviously can’t simply will himself to get better, so it’s not a moral failing for him to not get better. But if an alcoholic can simply choose to get better, then not getting better is a moral failure.
However, whether something is a choice is not as simple as many people think. Usually whether something is a choice is presented as a simple binary. Either it is a choice, or it’s not. It think it’s a spectrum. It’s possible for something to be sort of a choice. That’s not always clear, because most things we encounter on a day-to-day basis fall clearly on one end of the spectrum or the other.
I think addiction is a good example of something that falls in between. Another example would be OCD. Is it a choice for someone with OCD to perform their compulsions? It seems to me that it’s somewhere between completely voluntary and completely involuntary.
Somewhat tangentially related, this is a very good article about why we consider different conditions diseases or not, and why we treat them differently.
You can’t apply the logic of a physical disease to a mental one. You can’t so clearly separate what is the disease and what isn’t.
By your logic, a depressed person who can’t make themselves do what they need to do to get better has nothing to do with depression. Yet it does, entirely.
And, guess what one of the symptoms of alcoholism is? That’s right, depression. In fact, I’d argue that the disease part of alcoholism is usually depression or anxiety or some other mental illness.
I would actually guess that most alcoholics are self-medicating some problem that predates their alcohol use.
I disagree. Alcoholism can make you really crave alcohol but it can’t make you drink alcohol. That’s still a free, conscious choice you make.
I’m still waiting for the cure. 