The question was: Are mental disorders diseases?
No. Dependency and addiction are not diseases.
Maybe, maybe not. It’s an illness, though, and just as destructive.
(Sorry, like I said above, this subject is a little personal to me. I tend to get very defensive.)
I know very well how destructive it can be, having lived with an alcoholic. It can destroy the entire family, everyone it touches.
For something that is not needed to survive, if there is ANY question that it is a problem after all the years of studies and warnings and countless funerals and al-anon meetings, etc. the answer is just.don’t.do.it. If it takes daily support meetings to get to that point, fine. If it takes not being around alcohol at all in any way shape of form, fine. Whatever it takes, do it.
I can’t bear it even now - my own reaction to living with an abusive insane alcoholic. I don’t want to be around it, don’t want it in my house.
I’ve heard just about every excuse in the book (mainly that it was all the spouse, girlfriend, boss, dog, neighbor, etc.) to justify bad alcoholic behavior. I have little patience for it.
So you are agreeing that addiction is a mental disorder but saying that it is not a disease? So is Alzheimer’s not a disease either? This alsmost sounds like a semantic argument.
I have come late to the party, but will put in my 2 cents. You definitly sound like you have a problem. I speak from experience. I am 44 now, but from about 19 until about 29 I could have written the OP. I lived for the weekends. Lived for the party and the bars. I never considered myself an alcoholic. I was just having a good time, all my friends were doing it to. The problem was, as I eventually realized, that I NEEDED to get drunk to have a good time. When we hit the bars we never had just a few. Nope, every single outing ended up with me being shiatfaced. And of course I justified it when anyone pointed it out, just like you are doing. Same excuses.
I figured if it wasn’t affecting my work, if I didn’t crave it then there was no way I was an alcoholic. I met my first wife and stopped drinking. It took a while to realize that what I was doing before was the classic alcoholic. If you can’t have just one or two, if when you go out to have a drink it always ends up with you being three sheets to the wind you have a problem. I was one of the lucky ones. I never got a DUI or got into an accident. And I was also very lucky in the fact that when I decided to stop I was able to walk away and never look back.
Perhaps there is something in my chemical makeup that allows me to do so. I have a chronic injury that requires me to take morphine and percocet every single day, been doing so for years. Some would say that makes me an addict by default. However I know without a doubt that if medical science could find a way to stop my body from being in pain I would never take another narcotic. I once ran out of my perscription one weekend. Had to do witout for two days. I was in a lot of pain, but never craved the opiods. I didn’t need the pills. So in that acpect I feel very fortunate that I have the ability to walk away when I decide to. My heart goes out to those who don’t have it so easy.
The bottom line is only you can make the decision about your drinking. If you continue to justify your actions, or more impotantly if you HAVE to justify your actions you have a problem. If you continue to ignore it it will become a big problem. The drinking will affect your career and your relationships. You have to, for lack of a better term, grow up. I wish you the best of luck, you won’t believe how much more you will enjoy life when you are able to do activities with a clear head.
I do not doubt that there are thousands of horror stories out there, and while I sympathize with you and all the others, none of these stories have anything to do with the question being asked: Is an alcoholic an alcoholic until the day she/he dies? To answer this question, you would have to tell me your definition of an alcoholic and what it would take for you to say an alcoholic is cured.
Words mean things. If we are careful using them, answers are revealed-If we are sloppy with them, answers are hidden.
Ok-then carefully clarify the difference between the terms in relation to mental health.
So you’ve noticed, too, how much of all this is semantics? I think the issues brought up by the article you referred to on the opioid system (and advances have been made in the last ten years, BTW) will ultimately be able to show how much we can technically say that a person’s brain chemistry is “diseased,” and, most importantly, how permanent the damage is.
If you’re exposed to a lot of carcinogenic stuff for a long time, you can get cancer, and you have a disease. Sometimes you can contain or reverse it, sometimes you can’t. When you’re brain is exposed to a lot of ethenol for a long time, we see that it changes your neuro-chemistry. You have a diseased brain. (The fact that you did it to yourself is a separate–though important–issue.) Different people respond to that condition differently, just as cancer patients do, I believe. I think the science has confirmed that.
The disagreements really seem to come from all the socio-cultural connotations that people tie to the word “disease.” Some people think that the word is used solely in order to eschew responsibility for one’s actions, or to give up trying to change (CF South Park). And while some defense attorneys might try to do that in court, I don’t think that’s the purpose behind the so-called “disease model” for most people who are truly trying to get sober, certainly not for AA.
I will take a stab. (I am in NA, so I will use ‘addict’ instead of ‘alcoholic’. IMO, they are the same, but one is easier to type)
Yes. I have been clean for 24 years. IMO, I was born an addict. I will take my last breath as an addict. Whether I use dope between those periods is not the issue. I will never be ‘cured’. I am also a diabetic. I will never be cured of that either.
Someone said earlier that it was not a disease, because a disease cannot come in a bottle. This person was half right. The disease does not come in the bottle. It has much less to do with substance than with person. This discussion has primarily focused only on the obvious symptom of the disease, which is the negative consequences of being loaded. Those are a symptom, not the disease.
The disease is the need. Our literature states ‘We had to something different, and we thought we had found it in drugs’. And that pretty much says it all. Addicts are broken people. I can’t say what broke us, but we were broke before we found the dope. The easiest way to say it is that something is missing in us, a hole, and we have to fill it up with something. Drugs worked pretty well for a while. We used them till wheels fell off, and then we kept on using them.
Until we stopped.
Now, if the problem was the dope or the booze, we would never start again. After all, we have to ingest the substance, right? It’s not an accident, it is a choice. Now who in their right mind would choose to start using again after the shitstorm of misery that lead to realization that had to stop??? No one.
So why do we start again? Because we have a need. The need is always there. And it* has *to be filled with something. Some try to fill it with food, with thrills, with sex, with money, with work…anything that changes the way we feel, if only for a moment.
The program offers something for this. It offers a support group of people who are in the same boat and know what we are talking about. ‘An addict can best understand and help another addict’. It offers a way of life, a set of spiritual principles, that when consistantly applied, fills the hole. The ‘program’ is as follows: Meetings, sponsor, steps, fellowship, God, service. It has been my experience that a person incoparates all these things, their lives get much better. They can experience joy, walk through adversity, be productive citizens and be a positive part of others lives. But they have to keep doing it.
Kinda of like going to the gym. The gym works when you show up and work out. When you use the equipment as it was intended. When you do it consistanty. And when you don’t eat the junkand live the lifestyle you did that got you out of shape.
It is not a perfect system, to be sure. The biggest drawback is that it depends on the user. We are the users, and we have a track record of making some *fucked up *decisions. Some didn’t want to go to the meetings, some didn’t want to work the steps. Some of have actually believed they were ‘cured’.
And lots of people come in, decide they are* not really *one of us, and go away. This is very common. We cannot make this decision for them.
I have seen many folks, convinced that they no longer needed th program, come back after being away for a few months or years. They never look good. They never tell me it was good out there, that they could handle it now. They are always sucked up, often bruised and scarred, and always with a tale of woe.
That is what waits for me if I choose to go back and give it a try. Which I am always free to do. We never turn away someone who leaves and comes back. Never. ‘the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop using’.
I will not speak to the issue of treatment facilities, that is separate. But with 12 step fellowships, the general assumption is that we are a big treatment organization, a big therapy group. The reality is that we are much more analagous to a church. We do not have a single deity. Each member must choose their own. But it is a lot like a church.
I know that many of you want some science here, proving effectiveness. I cannot offer any. But then, science has not yet been able to explain* the need*.
Maybe I just don’t understand, but where in this did you explain what it would take for you to be convinced that someone was cured?
It was in the 2nd paragraph, where I said ‘never’.
Nope. That is yet another declaration that an alcoholic can never be cured, but it does not say what you mean by cured. It is the same as saying that man cannot levitate-this can be proven wrong if someone levitates in front of you. What has to take place for you to say that someone has been cured?
You seeing any guys levitating? I mean, you’ve seen an illusion of levitating, but you ain’t seen the real thing.
What has to take place is bending of time and space. To have been born in such a fashion as to have never felt the need. To be cured is to not have the disease in the first place.
Maybe I’m just not understanding what you are asking. I know you are an educated person, and familiar with the concept of chronic disease, diseases that are persistant or long-lasting. Some of these are life-long, incurable but manageable.
I am a diabetic. For me to be cured means my pancreas will have to be resurected from the dead. For me to cured means I will not have a problem with my pancreas. This cannot happen, so I will never be cured. Do you agree?
I mean, we call all agree that with the proper regimen, I will be able to live a long full life, but that doesn’t mean cured, does it?
Even if they (doctors) actually figure out how to surgically replace a pancreas, they are always gonna watch it, because they do not why it failed in the first place. So it is unlikely that I would could be considered cured even then.
If a person gets gangrene in the leg, can it be cured? If the leg is amputated, he no longer has gangrene, but he also doesn’t have a leg.
So it seems little like you just want to say ‘It’s not a disease, so shut up’. If I am wrong, I apologize. If I am right, just say that and I will NOT try to convince you otherwise. I will not dislike you for holding that position and will even understand (as best I can) why you do.
And it seems to me that you are so busy fighting a supposed viewpoint that I never declared that you are seeing ulterior motives in a very simple question. “Bending of time and space” indeed. If you see someone levitating, and no trickery is involved, then would you not admit that levitation is possible?
Someone levitates = Levitation is possible
??? = Alcoholic is cured
So, all diseases have to have a cure? Is that what you are saying?
Because doctors tells us they are a bunch that don’t.
How could I possibly ‘know’ that no trickery is involved?
I never said anything close to that. You should spend less time trying to find the hidden meanings behind what you think I mean when I post, really. Doctors have said in the past that certain diseases/conditions were incurable at that time. When cures were later found, the medical community accepted those cures-they did not say “Well, that means that those people never had that disease in the first place!”
What conditions would have to be in evidence for you to say an alcoholic has been cured?
And how could you possibly ‘know’ that someone is really an alcoholic in the first place?
I don’t like word games in response to serious questions.