The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
In 1956, the American Medical Association (AMA) stated alcoholism was a disease, as it met the five criteria needed in order to be considered a disease: pattern of symptoms, chronicity, progression, subject to relapse, and treatability.
Thank you for this information edna. I don't need to read this to know it is a disease. If anyone could have seen how alcohol affects my daughter and all it has done to her, they would be a believer that it is truly a disease! There is no doubt about it in my mind. Unfortunately in her family tree it is on all sides and didn't have any rhyme or reason as to skipping generations or anything. She just got it! And thanks to AA and treatment programs she is learning how to live with it now :) cdb
That's interesting. I still have trouble w/ it at times but I'm told it is because I don't have it. I don't pity my A or feed him psychically anymore, I love him with detachment, as I get to know myself for the true person I am... freeeing myself from the sickness it has caused me. Knowing it's a disease, gives me hope that it is treatable & thank God I can control myself, change myself & soon cure myself, wholly.
I may need the support of the literature for the rest of my life ~ but hey wtvr it took for God to get me praying again & to re-discover myself, I am grateful.
-K
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Light, Love, Peace, Blessings & Healing to Us All. God's Will Be Done. Amen.
Sorry, but I don't believe anymore that alcoholism is a disease and can be compared to diabetes. Diabetes is not treated by other diabetics or with talking daily at meetings with other diabetics about how you've destroyed your life, your family's life and friends. (same with cancer) If only there was a medication or a shot for alcoholism, but there isn't. I think people try to classify it as a disease because they don't know how else to take it. We don't see commercials on TV promoting diabetes or cancer, it's not sold in stores, it's not handed out at parties.
I know that people don't choose to be alcoholic, just like nobody chooses to be diabetic, but alcoholics chose to continue their destruction, sometimes even years after having stopped. And then in their and our treatment we're taught to only think of ourselves. Well it's a good thing that not everyone in the world were alcoholic, or living with an alcoholic, because if we all had to do this therapy, and ONLY think of OURSELVES, the world would be a sorry place.
I am glad that more places that treat the alcoholic know to treat the whole family to be around someone who has the disease/condition whatever you want to call it is difficult. It affects the whole family. I know in dealing just with my younger sister's alcoholism there was a tremendous affect on me. There will always be an effect on me to some extent because I did not get a sister as an adult I got a drunk. I can be very angry at her when I speak to her and she is loaded. I am not speaking to someone in reality. These days I choose not to speak to her in her drunk states (which is most of the time) so I do not get to have a relationship with her. I can of course have other relationships in my life but they are not with a sister. I was deprived of that by her disease/condition and her response to that. I have to grieve that.
Edders Sometimes I think breathing or life itself is a disease. I mean like I am still breathing, ya know? Where I am in school is learning the dominant paradigm has tosses us all to condition of addiction and we are just acting it out or reacting to it's condition. I chose to react to it instead of acting it out to transmit those codes to other's I interact with. Thanks 4 the share, Regards n light n love n I am glad u r here. light n love, \/\/ille
The only one of those five assertions I'd be tempted to challenge, actually, is "treatability". If somebody gets strep throat, you can hold them down and give them pills and they will get better whether you like it or not. Even if someone has a psychotic break and is totally bonkers, you can inject them with something to calm them down, then get them taking meds to control it.
What can you do with an alcoholic? Part of why AA is so popular, I think, is because doctors and judges are at a complete loss to deal with the problem in any traditional manner. We are very lucky that some of the time, at least, AA works.
I do believe that alcoholism is a disease, and that there are components of it that are genetic; it is hard to explain my family otherwise. (I am far from alone in this.) It goes beyond bad habits (although it is surely that) or moral failings (hard to avoid them when drinking) -- it is a very real destructive force in people's lives that takes on a momentum all its own.
