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Have you been affected by alcoholism?
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Stonedpilot wrote: »As a former alcohol addict I was ranting abit on AA on this thread, was stressful day yesterday and it's not my place to do so. Apologies; if it helps people good luck with it. I just don't agree with the disease model many AA members believe in or really thinking we are 'diseased'.
I do not think we should conflate AA and the labeling of alcoholism as a disease. The former is something that is not efficacious, useful and in many ways is actually harmful. The latter has good reasoning and support behind it that has nothing to do with AA. I will deal with that below though rather than say all the same things twice to two different people...........One eyed Jack wrote: »That's why I'm not a fan of this idea of referring to disorders like alcohol use disorder and eating disorders being framed as a disease. Framing disorders such as alcoholism and obesity as diseases means interpreting them as an issue that places an imperative on society to address
Firstly I do not think we are taking something that is not societies problem to address and pretending it is. Rather I suspect you are taking something that IS societies problem and pretending it is not.
Alcohol is part of society, part of our culture, and is at the level of government also a taxed revenue stream. We do not get to have our cake and eat it. We can not make it part of our culture AND a revenue stream and then pretend we have no obligations towards the darker sides of it.
So no we do not need mere linguistics to pretend something is true when it already is true. Problems with alcohol already ARE an issue for society to address whether you like it or not. And as someone who is already against social welfare and child allowance and the financial support of single parents.... I am guessing "not" here.
Secondly though there are genuine reasons why we use a disease model in relation to addictions. And none of those reasons fit the agendas you simply invent for it such as foisting the problems on society you imagine here or, as you imagined on another thread on a similar topic to this one, that we are taking a mental illness and have some agenda to "normalize" it. Though you dodged the questions on what you even meant by ""normalizing addiction" at the time.
But the REAL motivation for most people defining it this way has literally nothing with an attempt to "normalize" anything. Rather it is motivated by the simple fact that the treatment of any condition requires accurate diagnosis and classification of it. Only when we really understand what condition a person or people have can we move towards effective treatment plans.
Historically, as the "recovery village" points out, "addiction to alcohol and drugs has been seen as a moral failing. The person addicted was viewed as lacking in willpower". A set of attitudes that is the direct opposite of what is required to understand and treat the condition.
So no, no one is out to "normalize" anything so much as we are out to accurately portray it, understand it, and develop new and ever better treatments for it based on what it actually is, rather than what people like you simply want it to be for the sake of simplicity or judgement or whatever floats your particular boat.
Or put another way, calling it a disease is often motivated not solely by definitions and recognition of how many aspects of it DO match the definition of "disease" (which you were unwilling or unable to provide at the time you were asked) but also by the realization that treating it with the "disease model" is the best approach. There is a paper in Science by Leshner for example on not just why we classify it as disease, but why it actually matters.
as the "center on addiction" points out.... it is defined as a disease by "most medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine.". The latter for example define addiction as "Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry."
Also the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) also uses the word "addiction" to define compulsive drug seeking behaviors, though they do note that although the use all the same criteria for this as the DSM.... the DSM prefers to call it "substance use disorder" rather than addiction.
While DrugAbuse.gov tells us that “Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences to the addicted individual and to those around him or her.”
Leshner wrote in the peer reviewed magazine "Science", and you can source the paper on ncbi.nlm.nih.gov also, that "As with many other brain diseases, addiction has embedded behavioral and social-context aspects that are important parts of the disorder itself. " And while on the subject of magazines it was reported on also in Medical-News-Today why this definition is used in 2011 if you care to go read it.One eyed Jack wrote: »I've been to AA meetings Drumpot and I'll still always say that people who choose to become dependant on alcohol to the detriment of the people closest to them, are making a selfish choice.ThinkProgress wrote: »I don't ever feel sorry for an alcoholic... they choose the bottle. It doesn't choose them!
"This dying slowly, seems better than killing myself" - The Tindersticks.
You are almost, but not entirely wrong
Of course people ultimately choose their own vices. That is, pedantically at least, true.
But first and foremost people do not choose their own addictions and dependencies. That kind of thing sneaks up on people. They do not see it coming.
And often people around them do not see it coming either. Read the post by Sandor Clegane above. Just when his drinking had reached the level the people around him SHOULD have been saying "Dude, you need to look at where you are going with this" what they were ACTUALLY doing was finding it all a laugh, making videos of it, and laughing it all away the next day as a "Man that was great craic" attitude that their friend got that sozzled.
Second though, as an extension of this, how much DO people "choose the bottle"? It is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it is not really a choice. It reminds me of women wearing body bags in other cultures. It is claimed they wear it by choice. But the level of abuse and social stigma they receive when they choose NOT to wear it begs the question on how much of a choice it REALLY is in the first place.
I know in my teen years I chose not to drink. I was in 2nd year in college before I was drunk for the first time. And I paid a price for that. My peers in school did not want me going out with them on a Friday or Saturday night. If house parties happened, people simply did not move to invite me or even inform me it was happening. You were not a drinker, you were not welcome at events for drinking. And my social life suffered for that. Anything going on that was NOT drink related however, I was almost the first person to get invited to THOSE things. Because when drink was not involved, people generally did like me and wanted me around. But they were relatively rare occasions as we aged. And in college I felt enough pressure to be sociable that I started to drink then. Stopped after college though, and did not start again until around 7 years ago while living here in Germany.
Third there are a lot of narratives that people are "choosing" rather than the direct choice you are painting. For example a lot of people I have seen with such problems have narratives like "I work so hard all week that I deserve some "me" time doing something relaxing and drinking relaxs me". So they are not simply choosing an addiction or choosing to kill themselves slowly or any of the harsh distortions of this you are throwing out. Rather than are choosing a narrative that makes perfect sense to them at the time.
Fourth your narrative assumes a level of rationality on the people you are talking about. What we have found in medical science is that addiction actually alters the brain. Not just alters it but, alas, alters it in specifically the ways that would undermine making rational decisions about the things addicted to. It literally undermines the rational "Choice" you are describing at the level of the brain. As the old adage says "You can not reason someone out of an opinion they did not reason themselves into".
And finally, the problems associated with drink come incrementally. So slowly that most people do not even become aware of them. And increases in quantity happen so slowly people do not really acknowledge them consciously. You can be on 4 pints of a Friday night for years and suddenly move to 5. Then 6. Or start going out on a Saturday night thinking "Well 4 pints on a Friday is not bad, so why not 4 on a Saturday too". And then the effects sneak up slowly too. And the effects that SHOULD be warning signs tend to A) get explained away by something else like "Ah I must be getting old" or
Get laughed away by ones social peers as part and parcel of the whole experience. And as our hang overs get worse, for example, we wear that suffering and even brag about it like a badge of honor.
So yea one can pedantically call these things a "Choice". But how choice operates, how much of it we feel we have, is a continuum and subject to all kinds of external pressures and judgement and influences. And my knowledge of those facts, not opinions as you decried it to a user earlier, does indeed make me feel sympathy and respect for those from whom you withhold it.ThinkProgress wrote: »My addictions were completely down to me. They were my life choices. Just like it was my choice to beat them!
Which is fine. But what is not fine, and in fact can be quite dangerous in some contexts, is extrapolating a general opinion on a widde and expansive topic from ones own, single, personal anecdote of it.
What you say about YOU and YOUR addictions might be 100% true. For you. But could be 100% false for the next person.0 -
As I've gotten older I've realised that most alcoholics are functional, normal hardworking folks that look like anyone else
Yea I was under that "traditional" impression for a long time too, that an "alcoholic" is someone who can not function, and can not go without drink for any length of time.
I have since learned there is a whole continuum of behaviors and engagements with alcohol that can constitute being alcoholic. Thankfully I learned it BEFORE becoming one of the "traditional" types myself. But I only learned it after doing something silly while drunk that woke me up to it. Had that silly thing not happened I might have continued the way I was going.
The danger of the "traditional" view of it is that if you do not fit that, you can convince yourself you have not got an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. And in fact because I wanted to lose weight I stopped drinking between November 2015 and May 2016. No trouble, no craving, no issues. So when I started drinking again I did so under the illusion I was a healthy drinker because I was able to stop when I wanted. But in fact while I did not drink very often at all, I was up to the point of being able to put away 4 or 5 bottles of wine of an evening. And still "function" the next day after an hour or two of sleep.
July 2016 I did something silly, during my first and last actual "black out" from alcohol too, and then read and learned a lot more about alcohol, and decided to stop drinking entirely. Have not been drunk since. And in some ways I view it as having dodged a bullet and gotten lucky. Getting wise to alcohol before it got me.
I am just lucky and thankful I was never the traditional "addicted" type and I could stop when I wanted and decided to stop. I have an addiction to sugar and carbs. Coke and crisps and sweets mainly. And I struggle to fight it. My own brain works against me. I tell myself going into a shop I will not buy coke and things to eat with it. And then either I find an excuse to do it, or I find myself at the check out with it and not remembering actually picking it up. And then when I do manage to fight it for a few days.... the actual withdrawal cravings hit and I have no willpower left to fight it having spent it all on the days before.
Could you imagine given THAT weakness to something relatively benign as an addiction to sugar..... what my chances of fighting an ACTUAL addiction to alcohol would be? I am glad I caught myself before I reached that stage? To say I dodged a bullet and chose abstinence just in time is probably an under statement.I know it’s not unique to alcoholics but bing drinking to get a break from my racing mind was the only way at times I could get a break.
I was talking with a psychologist during the early periods of my deciding to stop drinking and he asked me something similar. After a few tests and questionnaires and stuff he decided to tell me I was remarkably intelligent and he asked me if I ever felt I was using alcohol to get a break from that. To kinda dumb myself down from awhile and get a break from my own overactive mind.
It struck me as entirely true and reminded me of a phrase Christopher Hitchens used to say while explaining away his own obvious dependence on alcohol which was "I drink to make other people more interesting". And I reckon he was saying essentially the same thing.My drinking problem was sinister. I drank on my own at weekends once a week when My wife went to bed. I told close friends and family and they were surprised. It’s sad cause you can always tell who may have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol but it can be much harder to spot a real alcoholic. It’s not always about quantity but about the effect and reason for drinking. Some alcoholics can give it up for months!!!
You are, as I said earlier in this post, essentially describing me perfectly. From the drinking alone (once a week at most, but on average I would say closer to once every two weeks.... but also alone while gaming or watching Netflix etc)......... to happily giving up for months without a single issue, craving, or detriment.
It was not until one night I was drinking not alone, but out and about (which was almost unheard of) that the true extent of my binges became quickly apparent. Harder to spot the problems, even in yourself, in the safety of your own home.
Worse is that there were other problems associated with my use of alcohol that I did not realize I even had until MONTHS after stopping drinking. I only noticed them in their absence. I did not notice them when I actually HAD them. I think I actively developed a form of depression so slowly and incrementally that I did not know I even had it until it was gone.
But suddenly one day I noticed an energetic and emotional engagement with life that had been absent for 5 or 6 years. And I realized that emotions I was feeling I either had not been feeling them for years, or I was feeling them through a murky fog that diminished them. And things like feeling love for my children were suddenly overwhelmingly powerful where they were just dully there before.
So I can really get into the head space of people who do not think they have problems with alcohol. How could they when even people who realize they DO have problems with it (like I did) do not even THEN see half the problems they actually have? Even with your eyes open you are still blind. So what hope for those who's eyes have not yet been opened to their problems?JohnnyFlash wrote: »There's bucks that can go out and sink back 15 pints, and not be an alco.
Interestingly here in Germany if the police find you walking around with a serious amount of alcohol in your system they can take steps to revoke your use of a drivers license. They can demand that you apply for what is called the "MPU" or known more colloquially as "The Idiot Test".
The thinking behind it is that nearly all "normal" people can not just simply take to drinking 15 pints. This takes an "Entwicklungzeit".... a training period where you are drinking more and more over a longer term to get to the point where you have that stamina and training to be able to do it.
And the affects of that training will be a long term dulling of things like senses and reaction times and more. So you can be removed from the privilege of driving until you prove in the MPU to a doctor and a psychologist that you are capable of driving and you have a healthy relationship with drink and your life path is not seemingly one that will make you ever more reliant on alcohol.JohnnyFlash wrote: »AA worked for him. Amazing worldwide organization that purposefully remains anonymous.
I do not find them all that amazing at all. And in fact even their OWN figures on their own efficacy show them statistically to be not that much more effective than simply doing nothing at all.
But like anything that claims to help, you are statistically going to get people's testimony that it helps them. And this is used to claim they are more effective than they actually are. But even with nonsense like homeopathy you will get claims "Well it helped me / my friend" etc.
There is little to think AA if that effective at all, or their "steps" do anything for anyone. But.... at the end of the day..... AA is at it's core simply a social group for mutual assistance with a problem by one's peers who also have that problem. And THAT is a good thing. But AA far from has a monopoly on that core benefit. And other groups that also engage at that level do so without A) nonsense "steps" and Religious agendas.
One problem I have seen is that people often thing one "self help" group is the same as another. So if one fails them or turns out crap, they are less inclined to try a different one. Now, despite having one of the lowest efficacy rates out there, AA is the household name and "go to" name when people think of such a group. So combine those two things..... AA is the most likely one to go to, the least likely to help, and is likely to disincline people to going to OTHER groups. This is not a good combination.
All I can say to anyone reading this thread who has a problem with alcohol, and found AA did not help them or failed them entirely........... it is NOT representative of the diversity of groups out there. Try a few others. Please. They are not all like each other and one failure says nothing about the next group.0 -
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