Is Alcoholism a Disease?
I have been told and read since I was knee-high to a bourbon barrel that alcoholism is a disease. That's still my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
But a book I am currently reading, Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner, contains a different view (page 233). I will save you the wordy reasoning, but he writes that "real" diseases require micro-organism changes to some organ. No such bodily alterations cause mental illnesses and no drugs cure them, leaving afflictions like addictions as un-diseases.
He goes on to claim, "At present no drug has proven effective to cure depression, madness, or drug abuse ... since these tragic scripts are not the result of chemical or micro-organismic changes in the body but the result of the scripted interactions between people.... Thus, alcoholism is not an illness."
Not so fast, Claude. The Big Book disagrees. So do Staying Sober authors Terrence T. Gorski and Merlene Miller (page 39-40): "Addiction is a physical disease. It is properly classified with cancer, heart disease, and diabetes as a chronic illness that produces long-term physical, psychological, and social damage. Like victims of these other diseases, alcoholics have physical conditions that have caused them to be susceptible to developing this disease."
Drugs are available, Claude. I take pills for depression and recently started on Antabuse, which will make me very sick if I drink alcohol. These aren't cures. But diseases like diabetes has no cure either. Just medicine to ward off the symptoms.
But a book I am currently reading, Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner, contains a different view (page 233). I will save you the wordy reasoning, but he writes that "real" diseases require micro-organism changes to some organ. No such bodily alterations cause mental illnesses and no drugs cure them, leaving afflictions like addictions as un-diseases.
He goes on to claim, "At present no drug has proven effective to cure depression, madness, or drug abuse ... since these tragic scripts are not the result of chemical or micro-organismic changes in the body but the result of the scripted interactions between people.... Thus, alcoholism is not an illness."
Not so fast, Claude. The Big Book disagrees. So do Staying Sober authors Terrence T. Gorski and Merlene Miller (page 39-40): "Addiction is a physical disease. It is properly classified with cancer, heart disease, and diabetes as a chronic illness that produces long-term physical, psychological, and social damage. Like victims of these other diseases, alcoholics have physical conditions that have caused them to be susceptible to developing this disease."
Drugs are available, Claude. I take pills for depression and recently started on Antabuse, which will make me very sick if I drink alcohol. These aren't cures. But diseases like diabetes has no cure either. Just medicine to ward off the symptoms.
Many successful drug and alcohol rehab programs include members of your family in your treatment program. Research has shown that including family and friends in the educational process significantly improves rehab outcomes.
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