Prost!
Posted By Kathleen David on December 8, 2005
I watched South Park last night. Having seen the episode, I am wondering of Parker and Stone watch Penn & Tellers: B*lls**t since the story followed along the lines of one of their shows about 12 step programs. They both commented on the idea that some have declared alcoholism as a disease. I’m sorry but cancer is a disease, even syphilis is a disease but alcohol is a choice. You can “cure” yourself by not drinking which is will power and self-control. If you can get rid of cancer with self-control I know some scientists who want to talk to you. Some people have little or no self-control and need structure to over come their problem. That is how I think 12 step programs work. I am not saying that for some they don’t work. I’m objecting to calling addiction to anything (Video Games, drugs, gambling, a TV show actor) a disease.
I have worked with a lot of people in my time at various jobs. I have had to deal with functional alcoholics and drug addicts with possibly some video game junkies thrown in for good measure. For the majority I have found that they really don’t take personal responsibility for their actions (It’s not their fault that they had a four martini lunch, it was the Mayor’s[This really was an excuse I was given when someone showed up plastered]) and there is a sense of self-loathing. They don’t like themselves very much so they drink to feel better. I am sure there are other reasons as well but it comes down to the fact that they have a choice to pick up that next drink or not. I have a friend who has never had a drop of alcohol in his life. It is a conscious choice on his part since he watched a good part of his family and extended family drink themselves to death. He knows himself well enough to know that if he started he might not stop so he has chosen not to even start. I am very proud of him for doing so. Yes, I do imbibe in alcohol, Yes, I have imbibed to excess from time to time but I have made the choices that put me in that state and I have made the choice not to find myself in that state again. Self-control is hard especially at an open bar but everyone can do it if they want to.
We may be getting another dusting of snow. Maybe an inch or so at most which will then turn to cold rain as the sun comes up. This time it will stick since we have been in a deep freeze since the last storm when through. I plan to use my anti-snow juju and stock up on things we need so that the storm will not come. Laugh if you will but we went from dire predictions of 5 to 12 inches to 3 to 5 to 1 to 3 after I did this on Monday so I am going to do it again today.
The living room, dining room, and kitchen are clean. Today I can concentrate on my back log of e-mail in my various accounts and getting some materials together for my next project along with running a few other errands that need running.
I am grateful for my parents teaching me about how to handle alcohol by both word and example.
Actually Ms. David, there are documented cases of practitioners of Transcendental Meditation or another “Mind over Body” philosophy who claim that their cancer was cured by willpower. It’s just that these claims aren’t the sort you can test in a lab – “OK Guru Smith, we are going to give you cancer, and then we would like you to show us how you get rid of it.” – and they occur infrequently enough that TM is the actual cause. Like people of faith and “miracle healing”, it gets labeled “Spontaneous Remission”, with perhaps some mention of counfounding factors. (At the same time, most medical professions do recognize that a “positive attitude” can greatly attenuate the effects of disease, and may even provide an opportunity for the body’s natural defenses to begin working.)
John Nash – of “A Beautiful Mind” fame – claims that he has overcome his schizophrenia by simply choosing to not listen to the voices in his head. (He also feels that “anyone can do it” if they try hard enough.) I have heard similar – though less well documented – claims for everything from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to Autism. And then there is Tom Cruise and Dianetics, who say that you don’t need drugs, you can think your way out of post-partum depression.
Just because some – many, or even most – people who drink too much simply need to grow up and act responsibly doesn’t mean that there are no alcoholics, just that they aren’t alcoholics. There are people with different brain structures, with more alcohol-related pleasure receptors, people for whom alcohol is a fundamentally different experience. Those people shouldn’t be ignored because some idiot wants to blame the mayor.
But even putting aside any physiological basis for addiction, you said yourself it is more than “just” willpower. Your friend doesn’t drink because “if he started he might not stop”. Not starting is his choice, but it doesn’t sound like he is totally in control, either. Not to mention he is also well informed of his family’s predispositions. How few people in your family have to be dead before it’s not your fault you didn’t know better? And as you say, your parents taught you “how to handle alcohol”. Others didn’t. If you have never been given the tools to make the right choices, simply saying “Just Say No” isn’t going to make any difference. Personally I agree, those tools should not be wrapped up with supernatural mysticism and claims of “powerlessness”. But on the other hand, alcoholism is so destructive – and only drinking that has risen to the level of destroying your life should really be called “alcoholism” – that I am willing to accept any tool used to fight it.
David, I think you missed the original point, alcoholism is not a disease. You don’t just wake up one morning and find that you are an alcoholic, it can’t strike “out of the blue” to anyone, there is an original choice to take the first drink. Cancer and Lupus can just happen, there are things that might increase the chance (and probably do), but you can live the “perfect” life and still get cancer or lupus. The two situations don’t equal each other as diseases.
I personally don’t drink, not because I don’t think that I couldn’t control myself, but because I don’t like the taste of the stuff. I don’t care if others drink, but have a feeling of pity for those that think, in their 30s or later, that getting drunk is a “great time.”
Of course the above should not be construed as an attack, it is only a differing point of view.
I would characterize alcoholism as more of a disorder than a disease. If you are born with a predisposition to the disorder, it has a chance of striking every time you pick up a drink; if not, you can get plastered every so often without becoming addicted to it. Once hit, though, it is not easy to stop. My aunt finally had to move my uncle to a tiny little town in the Cascades, too small to even have a tavern, and well away from all of his old friends, before she could get him to stop drinking. It wasn’t that he was “weak”; it wasn’t that, when sober, he didn’t want to stop; it’s just that when the stuff hit him, he was helpless before it. Twelve-step programs can work for some people, but they aren’t the “one-size-fits-all” solution many proponents seem to think.
Personally, I’ve got a one-step program for dealing with my caffeine addiction. I admit that I am addicted. Then I go get a cup of coffee. 🙂