This is the height of ridiculousness. People have no choice in becoming an alcoholic? How is it that the rate for alcoholism amongst people who refrain from drinking is 0%? It’s like saying people have no choice in catching STDs but that’s obviously false if they are abstinent (barring diseases caught from your mother at birth). You have to drink in order to be an alcoholic. Drinking is a choice. Therefore, being an alcoholic is a choice. Even if you’re more genetically predisposed to becoming addicted to it, you must start drinking to set it off.
Again, to me saying that drug addicts are suffering from diseases is insulting to those with diseases whose ultimate control is out of their hands. You can’t kick the bubonic plague by convincing yourself you don’t need it. You can’t kick it with a 12-step program. Ultimately the responsibility of getting rid of alcoholism is upon the user.
I think I’m done debating this topic because it seems to be moving nowhere. To me, again, an addiction is not a disease because it starts and stops via a choice by the user. I don’t consider heavy coffee drinkers to have diseases because they’re addicted to the caffeine. I don’t consider smokers to have diseases because they’re addicted to the nicotine.
I think you may be underestimating the compulsion, which, judging from your ‘theoretically’ disclaimer you already know. You may find these articles interesting;
And so on and so forth. Again, if it were as simple as just having the willpower to kick it I doubt nearly as many would die from alcohol related causes.
Insulting to those only you classify as having a ‘disease’, but that’s an argument of semantics and not reality. I suggest you re-read my linked articles, alcoholism is not something you get overnight. It slowly develops into the dependency from what people consider to be healthy intakes of alcohol. As stated in my links, the required amount becomes more and more, the dependency stronger, the withdraw symptoms worse as time goes on.
Your comparison with STDs is almost apt but not for the reasons you think; sexual intercourse is a normal and widespread practice, STDs are an unintended consequence. Drinking alcohol is a normal and widespread practice, alcoholism is an unintended consequence. Neither can be helped beyond swearing off the causes to begin with, but I direct you to the Constitution of the United States to see where that idea goes wrong.
The debate is moving nowhere because of a narrow and incorrect view of the definition of disease, I think.
Actually, I think you were done debating this topic before you opened this thread as it appears that you are willfully ignoring every citation and piece of information that has been provided to you. Since you decided that ‘disease’ means whatever you want it to and not the definition that the medical profession uses there really isn’t any point in talking to you.
If a person who has the genetic component to metabolize alcohol differently never or rarely drinks, are they an alcoholic? Based on the alcoholism as disease arguments, this would seem logical that it’s the case, since that’s the physical component that is responsible for the disease.
Is a person who has no genetic component to make them metabolize alcohol differently, but nonetheless chooses the immediate gratifaction of alcohol use over long term problems it causes, abuses alcohol regularly to the point where it’s damaging their life, are they an alcoholic?
Are other addictions (smoking, cocaine, whatever) different from alcohol addiction? I never hear of anyone referred to as a cocaineaholic. Do these things have a genetic component? What makes alcohol addiction special?
Is someone with the genetic components for diabetes (or insert other inherited disease here) a diabetic even though they are not symptomatic?
Yes. There are two parts to addiction, physical and mental. Anyone can get physically addicted to alcohol. It would be interesting to find out if there are differences in recovery rates for people without the genes vs. with…
I do not know enough about other addictions to give a valid answer though I will note that a reasonable number of alcoholics use and get addicted to other drugs. (BTW, it is not cocaineaholic, it is cokehead, and that is what NA is for ) I’ll see if I can find anything on this.
And again, most will NOT admit they are alcoholics! You’re not going to have an alcoholic say, “Oh, I can’t not drink-I’m addicted, I can’t help it!”
They’ll tell you, “I do NOT have a problem-I can stop any time I want.” Or, “I’m not drunk-I’m fine.”
I find your comments EXTREMELY offensive and incredibly ignorant. I’m not an alcoholic, but I lost someone I loved dearly to this disease. And there’s nothing I hate more than people who refuse to believe it IS a disease, because somehow, it seems, they’d rather judge a person. It almost seems to say, “You’re an alcoholic because you’re weak, you’re a loser-you don’t need help. You don’t have a disease-you’re just a wretch.”
To pick up on sleestak’s comparison, if a person who is predisposed to Type II diabetes maintains an extremely healthy lifestyle, the diabetes is likely to never manifest itself. That person is not a diabetic, just as I wouldn’t call the person in your example an alcoholic. But it doesn’t mean diabetes isn’t a disease.
I think most people would call that person an alcoholic. It’s possible to become dependent on alcohol even if you’re not particularly predisposed to doing so. To use the diabetes analogy again, people who have no genetic predisposition to type II diabetes but who maintain an unhealthy weight and lifestyle will often develop it.
Just because something came about through one’s own actions, it doesn’t mean it isn’t a disease. People abuse alcohol for lots of different reasons, and everyone reacts to it differently. What makes one an alcoholic is an overwhelming need to drink alcohol that defies good sense.
Not all addictions are the same. For instance, the vast majority of people who smoke cigarettes regularly develop an addiction, while the vast majority of people who drink alcohol do not. Cocaine is a different animal entirely, in that the dependence is almost entirely psychologic (which is not to say it’s any less real or serious than other addictions–it’s just different).
) I’ll see if I can find anything on this.