It's always cool when you and I spend time debating issues relating to recovery. I'm glad that we are openminded enough to watch the DVD and to consider what they say about addiction and how that relates to our own experience. I know that neuroscience is at the cutting edge in all sorts of arenas.

I shall look forward to the responses here!

I know I react different to booze than a normal drinker. I felt this over and over again before I got to AA and looked at it for what it was, one thing I'm grateful for. Allergy matches my experience perfectly. Incidentally, I don't think there will ever be straightforward evidence for it, it was just meant to be an 'idea', a way of putting things that simply explained the experience of alcoholics.

I don't really buy 'Addictive Personality', I think it's a cop-out but of course this comes from my own experience. Drink controlled me in a way that some of my other problems never did.

It's a little like Quantum Physics if you ask me. The concept is useful until you start trying to explain the specifics :o). Also think it becomes a problem when you start using it to explain any compulsive behaviour that you have diffuculties with.

A humble laymans opinion.

The disease concept is what allowed all the inpatient treatment centers to rake in big dollars back in the 1980's ... until the insurance companies ummmm errrrrrrrr ... caught on.

::: Yosemite Sam fail laugh :::

But .... I have no opnion one way or the other.

lol Here a analogy ! Inspired!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdb3hY2u-Us

simple to me. 4 children, one family..2 had the disease. one after 17 years of sobriety suicided (my brother) after relapse. my father was an alcoholic, mother not (but sick nonetheless due to her own emotional problems). my father died, my brother died, i came close and now my younger brother (who speaks to none of us "weak"(self-professed alcoholics) people drinks his beer in his garage. my father did not drink at home. you tell me. what caused the devastation of my family? coincidence? i think not.

Here's a interesting article...I like how it seems to make Alcoholism out as generational as well as a societal problem while maintaining the illness in language far less structured! While remaining pragmatic and less heady about it:)
http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=576&C=729

FataMorgana - that is more a problem with healthcare provision than the disease concept. if a doctor starts fradulent charging insurance companies for diabetes treatment when his patients dont have diabetes that doesnt stop diabetes being a disease. Treatment centres charging astronomical amounts for inefficient (and sometimes unnessecessary) treatment doesnt by definition affect whether alcoholism is a disease or not.

Rejection of the disease concept is why around 2.5million addicts and alcoholics (in the US alone) are imprisoned and being dealt with by the justice system rather than having their actual problem addressed. The problem is being dealt with in terms of symptoms rather than causes.

Don't care what it is called or where it came from - bottom line I have it (sort of like my eye color).

"Disease" or not, I still cannot take a drink - period -

@ okiyoe

http://www.hark.com/clips/mxsplxsgdw-falling-laugh

Yes, Nicky ... I know that.

It's all about the pathogenesis.

Yours truly,

Fata X Morgana

Yes!! fata I laugh like that , as my father did!! long story about similarities there.. but I'm sure you've heard much about similarities :)

Most of the study's I've seen I take with a grain of salt some try and sell ya a product others its just what it says a "study"

I believe in the disease concept but today it doesn't matter I have this thing called alcoholism and it doesn't matter what I think about it and stay in the solution of my program.

So I don't tend to get into the disease or not debate. Its sort of like trying to pinpoint when my drinking went from something I could do or not do, to something I felt compelled to do no matter what. Fact is for me, drinking isnt a healthy or moderate option. I'm not sure it ever was. I don't recall ever drinking because I liked the taste, or wanted to just relax a bit. i drank to alter the way I felt. I'm an alcoholic. How or when I arrived doesnt matter. What matters now to me is sobriety and the daily, sometimes it seems hourly reprieve I have from being a drunk.

Nice article Okiyoe

We have some responsibility for drinking ourselves into the problem, or continuing, albeit we have no control over being a 1 in 10. Like that.

Not sure I should participate in this argument but I'll go ahead anyway. :-/

I just don't buy it. It doesn't matter to me whether it is classified as a disease or not. I have a choice today and I don't expect any insurance company to cover me if choose to pick up again. My opinion relates only to me - If a friend needed rehab or the like and needed insurance to get the help I WOULD want them to have it. It's a tough call I think.

This article talks about incarceration being an unjust consequence for an addict. I honestly find that infuriating. There is a solution when an addict/alcoholic wants it badly enough. Some don't choose that solution until those legal consequences tire them out. I have friends who got sober because they wanted a different life FINALLY after imprisonment, probation, house arrest, etc. Anything less than those consequences would have been enabling imo.

There is a solution although some never find it and that is heartbreaking - maybe hospitalization is the only way to "save" them, but for many we have found this solution. I never thought I would find my way out of the vicious cycle but I did by taking ACTION and working hard to stay in recovery. My choice in the matter has been returned to me and I accept full responsibility if I slip back into active addiction/alcoholism. I know today what I need to do to stay in recovery and I do that to the best of my ability.

I do believe that stress and anxiety and other mental disorders have much to do with the grip addiction holds on active alcoholics/addicts, but if that is not resolvable via the steps, then it may be resolvable via other help, ie therapy, hospitalization, or meds.

I found my solution to be a combination of a spiritual experience and outside help which I am still seeking. I may be different than normal people once I take alcohol into my body and maybe that lends itself to the disease model, but to have a spiritual experience be my solution does not. Some do not credit a spiritual experience but rather willpower or lifestyle change, and while that was not for me, it also negates the argument that the addict has no choice. In ACTIVE and/or physical addiction, maybe this is all arguable, but the cure for that physical problem is just abstinence.

This is purely my opinion. I am no expert. I just know how I feel about it. If it helps others to see it as a disease then that is fine by me.