Talk about your various addictions here

And don't forget, alcolholism is a disease like t.b. or cancer.

c.i., for many years I struggled with the concept of alcoholism being a disease. I refused to accept that my father had no personal control over whether or not he drank, that he had no personal responsibility for his actions. I still struggle with it.

I know that addictions are physical, I know that it's a struggle to not give in to the urges, but I have a problem when someone hides behind the cloak of disease when the devastation of their own lives and the lives of those around them is so directly tied to the personal decision to lift that first drink to one's lips each day.

I've tempered my anger towards my father over the years, but even though he eventually stopped drinking, I've never been able to get to an emotional place that lets me say, 'He couldn't help it, it was a disease.'

Why is alcoholism considered a disease and not the addiction to cigarettes, food, sex, gambling, etc. And speaking of losing your house, your job, your family and everything, how many sad gambling stories have we heard told? Gambling is another powerful addiction that can override all rationale and common sense. Got a few of them in the family as well and I've stayed away from it because of the weakness I have always felt for it. From the time I was a child at the amusement parks. The rides were okay but the penny arcades were my attraction. My father took me to the track once and I lost my 8 year old mind when my horse didn't win. Gambling is very, very dangerous for me. I would never, ever go to a casino unless someone else had control over my purse strings. My husband and I play the lotto but he buys the tickets and controls how much is spent.
Having an addictive personality makes life a little more challenging but, for me, acceptance and acknowledgement was the first step and then, discipline. And reward.

And then there's shopping.

In recent news people were suing a pharmaceutical company, claiming a drug they had been taking (can't remember the name) caused addictions, I seem to recall gambling.

If a drug can cause addictions, perhaps one could be developed that would turn people off the object of an addiction. I don't know, just recalling this news story.

I think one of the reasons alcoholism was declared a disease was to obtain medical insurance for the treatment of the "disease." I think addiction is a disease, the same as anorexia is a disease. Don't think it's farfetched to think a drug may be available someday that could "cure" alcoholism, smoking. Why not?

Here's an interesting article identifying alcoholism as a disease.

http://www.physiciansnews.com/commentary/298wp.html

Shopping. I have that addiction. I have honed it down to grocery store thrills, which is a good thing as I have fairly expensive (if not always, some fine objects are not expensive and some idiotic ones are) taste. I feed my shopping troll with fresh local produce, that expensive little bag of red bhutan rice...., and I just got home from a trip to the Discovery Shop (cancer society thrift store) where I got just the perfect rayon shirt, albeit a men's shirt but who cares - it is black with a field full of dogwood blossoms in chartreuse colors. $4.00. Thus, I fine tune my culling the goods nature to fairly low rent.....

Hmm, I wonder if that's medically treatable?

My doctor thinks I'm addicted to the internet.....but I'm in total denial!

Oh, that's easy to fix. Give your doctor the a2k website url.

J_B, you had every right to be angry with your father. Or, at least, it was the most natural and undertsandable emotion under the circumstances. But, remember, you would probably have been just as angry if he had, say, a respiratory disease which he refused to get treated. I think you would have been angry if you saw our father suffering and he would refuse to see a doctor.

This is the dilemma with alcoholism. It isn't just that the sufferer is addicted. Many refuse to recognize the addicition and refuse to acknowledge that they need help. I was a sorry drunk for more than 40 years. I thought I was just a social drinker who, once in a while, had a little too much to drink. I alienated my family, my erstwhile non-alcoholic friends, lost jobs, ran the whole gamut of denial before I acknowledged that my drinking had gone way beyond 'recreational.' I had to take the first step in the AA 12-step program and admit that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life -- if you could call it that -- had become unmanageable. For all too many people, this is a very hard step to take. Alcohol is so much a part of the social pattern in Western society that to admit one is ill with the disease of alcoholism seems to be admitting a weakness of character that nobody wants to own up to.

Patience with such alcoholic behavior is extremely difficult for the addict's family and friends. For them, there is an organization parallel to Alcoholics Anonymous. It's called Alanon. It is also a 12-step program, designed to help the suffering spouse or other relative or friend understand and cope with the codependent situation in which they find themselves. It's probably listed in your local phone book.

But, again, J_B, there's no need to feel any regret for your anger at a person who refused to face some unpleasant facts about his drinking. I say this as one who was that person until about 10 years ago.

I agree with MA re aa, although I have known some who don't like aa and have stopped on their own, and at least one who, after doing that, faltered and then went to aa and is back on the straight and narrow.

Me, I fault the whole culture of escape obliteration that is rampant not only in the US, for a change, but in a number of other places.

There is a way to enjoy alcohol - at least for those without the non-ability to metabolize - without aiming for blotto. But blotto is so prevailing an image in the US, so much a known destination, that simple pleasures are nearly dismissed, and certainly not taught.

About my father...He's been gone now for five years, didn't take a drink for the last twenty-plus years of his life and yet, it's still hard to come to any conclusion about it. Between my tenth and eighteenth birthday, when he left my mother and our family for the last time, I tried to see him and love him in terms of his being an alcoholic, having no control over his drinking, but then, a few years after he left, like there was nothing to it, he stopped drinking and it completely baffled me. If he'd been able to stop, why did he put his family through such hell for so many years?

Of course I realize now that you stop when you're ready and he said it himself when I finally asked, that he stopped when he did because he was simply ready to, but it always left me feeling somewhat pissed that he didn't stop sooner. He put us through hell for many years. He was an evil drunk and from one day to the next, we never knew what condition he would be in when he hit the front door.

It's quite easy to say that one of the components which makes alcoholism a disease is that it is not accepted by the alcoholic.

Just because one does irresponsible things when drinking alcoholically that does not mean he is not responsibile for his actions....

Sooner or later, one way or another, we all pay the piper.

Perhaps the price your father paid was losing your trust, and having your believe he was not responsible.

That is an old battle cry among addicts/alcoholics "I can help it"

Been there, believe me, you feel the remorse in the morning.

Before an alcoholic puts down the last drink, he/she has to "hit bottom." That bottom is different for different people. Some of us get the message early on. For some, it's enough to be fired from a just once due to alcoholic behavior in order for them to reassess their whole drinking pattern. Others go from job to job, blaming everyone and everything except their own drinking. In my own case, it was the realization, after years of thoughtless indulgence, that my drinking was hurting and inconvienincing people I loved. The person who stops drinking after the breakup of a marriage, rather than earlier, probably came to the realization that the breakup was due to his drinking belatedly. I've known alcoholics who, after such a breakup and ensuing sobriety, were able to maintain cordial and respectful relationships with their exes and even regain the love and trust of their children.

I was about to post the same thought, MA.

First, I would like to thank you, Walter, and Chai Tea for opening up on this forum. I appreciate your candor and your thoughts.

I was struck by Eoe's post as my thoughts were along the same lines. My father stopped drinking when he threw a pulmonary embolism, was hospitalized, and thought he was going to die. This was at a point in his life when his children were all grown and married, although we all married *very* young in order to escape. The illness was his rock bottom. He never would have given up drinking without the life being scared out of him, figuratively and almost literally. He did it on his own, without a program or outside assistance, and he never drank again.

He and my mother had many congenial years after he stopped drinking and I even established a civil relationship with him. But I never again thought of him as my father because he was a different person than anyone I had ever known. My father was a miserable drunk, this man was my mother's companion.

Like Eoe, I was happy that he stopped drinking but it made me mad that he did it only when it suited him, and his personal desires. It hurt me to think he could have made the same decision years earlier but chose not to. Instead he chose to drink and put his young children in a car and get behind the wheel when he had no business doing so. He chose to drink instead of attending my sister's wedding, my brother's high school graduation, and so on, and so on, and so on...

By the definition of the word disease,



alcoholism certainly qualifies. As in the article CI linked, it certainly has an identifiable group of signs or symptoms, it's progressive and potentially fatal, and is a pathological condition. I think we are all predisposed to certain progressive and potentially fatal diseases, be they cancer, diabetes, or addictions. I think some people luck out and never trigger those predispositions into a disease state and others do. I know many, many cases of stress induced cancer, where someone survives an extremely stressful life event, only to be diagnosed with cancer a few months later. Others come in contact with environmental exposure and develop lymphomas and someone else with the same contact remains healthy. I think alcoholism is triggered by predisposition and life events. Unlike cancer or diabetes, I'm not convinced succumbing to the illness isn't a matter of choice.

Merry Andrew, I was familiar with Alanon as a child. One of my sisters attended their meetings. She was the only one of us who ever accepted that my father's drinking was outside of his control. She fished with him, hung out with him, and more than any of us, accepted him. I don't know if that's because she went to Alanon, or if she went to Alanon because she was more tolerant than the others

I never went overboard smoking cigarettes but it irritated my sinuses. Still, it was almost impossible to quit and didn't do so until I got an ulcer and almost bled to death. Never smoked again and it's been 25 years. Too bad I picked up an addiction to sweets while quitting. Gads, that was worse than smoking, and not too good for one's health either.

Just rereading the posts, and read this one more thouroughly, God it sent chills down my spine, it hit so close to home.

My father was a really nasty drunk. He owned his own business, so could start drinking whenever he felt like it. From the age of 6 to 11 I was his personal bartender to start him off from about 4 o'clock, until he came up to the house for dinner.
We lived on the same property as his business, so my mother would start calling, telling me to bring him down a glass of "ice tea"
He only drank Manhattans, and even at 6 years old I remember wondering if my parents really thought the people around them were so stupid to think I was really bringing him a glass of ice tea in a manhattan glass, with about 4 ice cubes. At first I thought they were joking until the day I said to him in front of other people, 'here's your manhattan' and got holy hell later for that.
When I turned 11 my younger sis was 6, so she took over. I remember comparing notes with her about our bartending skills.
He was so mean and nasty I used to try to water down his drinks, but my sister laughed and said she'd always make them stronger so he'd get drunk quicker and pass out. Yeah great, but that was in my teenage years when things got really bad between him and me.

Anyway, like you eoe, you just never knew what the night would bring. He had a habit of picking one person for the night to concentrate on. There were 5 of us kids, and every night we'd sit at the dinner table waiting until he started in on one of us. I can remember the feeling of relief when he didn't pick me, because that meant as long as you kept your mouth shut, it was pretty sure you could eat your dinner in peace, and get to your room when done.

Years after I left home, first he quit smoking, then drinking shortly after. But you know what, by that time the damage was done. All he did was stop drinking, he was still the same person inside.

Surprisingly, I did not grow to hate my father. I adored him until the very end. When he left the last time, when I was 18, I was upset for about 3 days before realizing how peaceful and harmonious our homelife had immediately become. I have my mother to thank. She was very instrumental in my relationship with him, always reminded me and my brothers, his stepsons, that above all else, he was our father and deserved our respect. And altho she refused to take him back when he tried to return, she never allowed me to move away from him emotionally, insisting that I remain in close contact with him and I did. I think, after he left and everything was fine and mellow, it became a simple situation of just letting bygones be bygones. Lots and lots of spilled whiskey under the bridge.

walter no disrespect but i think my avatar looks beter than yours