I am pretty firmly tied to the idea that alcholism is a disease but that it is a disease like Diabetes that can be kept in remission through learning how to live well in AA (first learning tools to abstain, then learning emotional sobriety and balancing).
Accepting this so fully makes step 1 very easy for me. My mind, body, and spirit are totally unable to process alcohol like a non-alcoholic.
HOWEVER, this is not a disease like cancer. My alcoholism doesn't own me any more. I cannot say that I own or have it beat either. I can keep it in check through my choices to live a healthy lifestyle that includes not only AA, but exercise, a better diet, positive and fulfilling work experiences, and positive social contacts, all things that nurture my spirit (I guess all these are able to be construed as remaining willing but not not just staying sober off willpower).
I got started thinking about this from someone who kept saying on the alanon site "How can you be mad at someone for having a disease? Would you be mad at them for having cancer?" I never want to view my disease as a cancer. It is a chronic illness for me that can be managed. Fortunately for me, managing it also forces me into living more healthy in other ways. For that I am grateful...This disease forced me into healthy living and the gratitude I have for that also helps keep me sober :)
Curious as to what you guys think of this as alcoholics....Would like your feedback.
Mark
__________________
Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
I believe I had an alcoholic mind before I ever picked up my first drink. I was born with it....And I have recovered from it. And I will stay recovered as long as I stay spiritually fit...If I practice these principles daily. I don't know why people are so afraid to say that... "I'm a greatful recovering alcoholic.." I guess if you are still working the steps that's OK.
I will die an alcoholic...I will never be cured...But I can leave this earth a recovered alcoholic...As long as I leave my will and my life right where they are.
WE, OF Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. Foreward First Edition.
A physical allergy and a obsession of the mind, I agree it can be "treated" but never "cured" Thank God for AA that we are not doomed to die as we were in our drinking careers. We are able to arrest the beast as long as we work the program!
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
I think you have an interesting view point here ... and I like what Stepchild had to say ...
I'm not going to give you the feedback that you were probably expecting ... I am not really sure why your view of cancer and alcoholism are in conflict ... In my opinion, cancer, like alcoholism, is a disease ... possibly you could classify that alcoholism is a disease of mind, body, and soul and cancer, that of body only ... unless you take a closer look ...
I was diagnosted with a fast spreading cancer ... (17 years ago) ... I don't know how you would react, but when I got the news, I became very, very depressed ... surgery was just a 'hopeful' 'not for sure' solution ... I went into this 'why me' pity pot thinking and a state of depression like an alcoholic whose actively drinking ... Basically, I am saying that it affected my 'state-of-mind' to the point it made me mentally and spiritually sick also, just like alcohol ... There was nothing I could do for myself to fix myself ... I was at the mercy of the doctors, and God Himself ... I needed their help, I couldn't do this thing alone ... same as alcohol ...
So, ..... I view alcoholism to be a lot like cancer ... It's terminal, it will kill you ... slowy ... and like alcohol, If we don't take action and get help, then we die ... game over ...
I did go to the doctors, reluctently I might add, to have a rather large, deep portion removed from my back ... then periodically go back for checkups ... but I came away 'cancer' free ... I guess the gist of my story is that cancer and alcohol both will kill you if you don't do anything to stop them ... in both cases we need help to recover from them ... and neither my alcoholism nor my cancer own me anymore ... For Today ....
Keep in mind also, like alcoholism, my cancer can return! ... Thank God for Today!
Take Care and God Bless, Pappy
-- Edited by Pythonpappy on Wednesday 23rd of November 2011 04:45:10 PM
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'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
Actually, that did help python... I kinda wondered if maybe I was off base and that's why I asked for the feedback. Your ESH was helpful. I guess it makes me feel vulnerable to see it like cancer cuz of knowing you can do literally EVERYTHING suggested and still die of cancer. I feel like if you do everything, change everything, and work AA just as it is laid out, you WILL be sober. Kind of like there is a really good likelihood of managing diabetes if you follow Doctor's advice. This could be me wanting some insurance against relapse...dunno. As usual, I guess I'm splitting hairs lol.
Thanks to the rest of you guys on your perspectives also.
Mark
__________________
Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
To be honest, there are different types of cancer and those who are diagnosted with incurable cancer don't have many choices at all ... I consider my cancer a wake-up call even if I didn't realize it at the time ... I was very fortunate, and I later came to believe God was keeping me around for a 'higher' purpose ... I feel now that that purpose was and is to give away the peace and serenity I found by working the program of AA's twelve steps ...
I now feel that I had two death sentences and by God's grace am still here for a reason ... I give thanks each day to God for His blessings and ask that He take me this day and do with me as He sees fit ... guess what? ... I'm still hereeeeee! ... and most of all I can now participate in life, and it actually has some meaning to it now rather than something I must endure!
Take Care and God Bless, Pappy
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'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
Great thread Mark...For me it is important to understand the disease of alcoholism and addiction in my life and my understanding comes from experience and education. I've learned in the rooms of Al-Anon and AA and in the classrooms of college. What I found out...came to realize...is that the disease of alcoholism is historic in my family of origin and that I was genetically predisposed from birth. If anyone in my family understood alcoholism or drug addiction from any angle it was never talked about. Being a drunk was a "moral" issue and any family member who displayed the propensity for getting drunk often was morally weak and had other immoral characteristics connected or alongside that one. Any family member who got drunk and out of control in anyway was supposed to be able to wholistically understand the downside to themselves and others and just correct their course. Alcoholism was never discussed and neither was drunkeness openly and it was disrespectful to bring it out in the open.
I was turned on by my grandmother at the age of nine as my mother begged her not to give me and my siblings the cultural wine. My mother fought it because of her experiences with her father and her sister. She knew from experience what the chemical would cause and do and didn't want her children turned on. My natural father was also from an alcoholic family and some of the stories I've heard suggest that he had a problem with alcohol himself...he died when I was six from tuberculosis which has a strong connection to alcoholism. Children of alcoholics develope poorly; fetal alcoholic syndrom and effect and very often the lungs do not develope as otherwise in healthy births.
I was predisposed and the first drink I ever had was the very best. It was an atomic explosion of relief from the fear and anxiety I constantly felt in my first years of life which I learned if I prayed hard enough would be lifted from me. God was in that bottle and until I was 47 and entering the doors of recovery on my own desire I chased that first drink with every drink I had and every alcoholic/addict I drank with. For me alcohol and drug addiction isn't/wasn't a disease. Its a DISEASE!!. I have had three toxic shocks looking for the god in the bottle. When I drank there just wasn't enough god available. The was and is more God than I can explain from inside the programs of Al-Anon and AA and for that I am extreemly grateful.
Great thread!! (((((hugs)))))
-- Edited by Jerry F on Thursday 24th of November 2011 02:52:38 PM
I don't view the disease of alcoholism/addiction as "mine". I refuse to give it that kind of claim of intimate connection to me. I despise the term "substance abuser". I don't abuse the substance-once in the body, it abuses me. It wants to kill me. It does not belong to me; it is an invader. I will do everything possible to defend myself against the enemy.
Let's look at what the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says,.. not once but twice...
Page 24, Paragraph 2: "We are unable, at times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink."
pg 43, third paragraph- Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.
(And this is a disease that I think or believe "I" have the ability to manage? If I do think or believe this, I am not accepting my own powerlessness, or I'm not an alcoholic)
The American Medical Association has 3 primary tenets by which a "disease" is defined
1. It's Chronic - It cannot be wished away, willed away, ignored away, and it is inclined to periodically come out of remission (rear its ugly head again) even with the best known treatments being undertaken and all indicators of a full remission in place.
2. It's Progressive - In the absence of agressive and effective treatment it always gets worse, never better.
3. It's Potentially Fatal - There are no guarantees. Even though the sufferer's illness has been in remission for a substantial period of time, and their health relatively restored, should they be inflicted with another bout it could result ulitimately in their death.
To understand alcoholism or addiction a person needs to grasp and understand the pathology of the brain that is effected by it. This is where the disease we are addressing is centered. It is more operative as a neurological malfunction, that as a by product has physiological and behavorial symtoms.
That being the case, if a person has a neurological disorder/malfunction, how can we expect that brain to make good, healthy, wholesome decisions? Isn't that the same as expecting the abnormal to act normal?
So many times I hear a parent, wife, husband, brother, sister or adult child say, "This is absolutely insane! Why won't they stop??" They just answered their own question. The key word is "insane". (neurology) Thus in step two this is what we are seeking to be restored, our sanity. This takes time, effort, faith, and a great amount of environmental, and emotional support.
However being alcoholic.. there will come a day when nothing stands between us and a drink... besides God. It won't be because I managed my disease. In fact, the Big Book also says that 'self knowledge availed us nothing"...
I hope this writing helps those with some questions better understand why alcoholism or addiction is defined as a disease and some of the internal dynamics of it that the eye can't see.
Very well put ... I just love the way you seem to bring the Big Book to life ... You make everything so 'up-close-and-personal' ... and since 'for us to drink is to die', your messages also come at a very timely point in my sobriety ...
Love ya man and God Bless, Pappy
__________________
'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
...I just love the way you seem to bring the Big Book to life ...
I can't help it, the Big Book and a HP that loves me so much that I wonder if He really has any high standards at all.... brought me to life!! LOL I can only share my experience, strength and hope... and match it with a sense of what it use to be like, what happened and what its like now...
I still often wonder what I'm going to be when I grew up... but in the main time, I enjoy splashing in the mud puddles of life and getting my feet real wet... only difference is I don't expect anyone else to clean up my messes. I get to do that part of the party as well. :)
I've come face to face with some other diseases in the past year that are somewhat underwhelming in their ordinariness. I have type II diabetes, I'm overweight (although I prefer the less PC term "fat"), I have high blood pressure... I take what I call the "middle aged fat guy cocktail" of prescriptions for my BP, diabetes, cholesterol, etc. They control things reasonably well but not as well as dropping another 50 lbs would do (I have already dropped 60+ from my highest weight).
Alcoholism is a lot like type II diabetes in that I woke up one day and had to acknowledge I'm now "one of them".
I've had some incidental stuff that isn't directly related to these things or to alcoholism... but, who can say really? Kidney stones, gall stones... these things aren't really well understood, other than once you get 'em you tend to keep on getting 'em. Well not the gallstones, that little problem has been solved. I had a recent trip to the emergency room with chest pains, which turned out to be... well, not a heart attack, not pneumonia, they were gone in 24 hours and the doctors said my blood looked pretted good and they sent me home. But it was scary. I'm a candidate for heart problems, but don't seem to have any... yet.
Anyway, I take pills for these other things. They work. I can't take a pill for alcoholism... and in fact my answer to the old question about "if they made a pill to cure alcoholism" that I usually give is yeah, I'd take the whole bottle... LOL.
I believe that cancer can be cured if the cancer decides it has had enough... my alcoholism OTOH can only be stopped when *I* have had enough. The "cancer" in my brain that causes me to want a drink when all logic and reason say otherwise has to give up.
I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I didn't understand Him at all. With the vaguest concept. Perhaps I did not make that decision at all... that I made a choice is merely an illusion.
I can't change my past. I can't change anything I did when I was drinking or give back one drop of alcohol I consumed. Nor can I give back the fat, carbs, salt, and sugar I've consumed to make me the middle aged fat guy reliant on prescriptions. I'm grateful for all of it, that my lazy ass can continue to live in spite of my poor choices (again I use the word metaphorically), and I'm grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 steps.
Diabetes may get me some day, or my heart may get me, or cancer may get me, or a meteor may crash down from space and flatten me like a pancake. But if I continue to work the steps and practice the principles to the best of my ability, I don't _have_ to die from alcoholism. It's the progressive, incurable, fatal disease I don't have to die of.
I've seen friends who practiced AA with more zeal and fervor than I'll ever be able to muster die drunk. I've seen friends with more relgious belief and conviction than I'll ever attain die drunk. It makes me ask God again and again, why me? Why am I sober?
I used to dream when I was young that one day I would understand everything. I was, and still am, fascinated with the workings of the universe. I love science. But what I *have* learned is that each new discovery only brings more questions. Maybe we humans can't handle the answer... LOL. Or maybe, the answer is right in front of us and we can't comprehend it. I'm well past the halfway point in my life, unless science holds further surprises for us middle aged fat guy alcoholics... and I've come to accept that I'm never going to know these answers, nor am I likely to ever know "why me". God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no. And he answers all questions, although I think most of the time the answer is "none of your business".... LOL.
Thanks for the topic Mark. Very thought provoking, infact I have been contemplating it for a while now. You have got some amazing and deep responses and it never ceases to amaze me how much I still have to learn, that there is always another way of looking at things. I get the point others have made about managing a disease when we really have handed the management decisions to our God, so I suppose "How do I live with my disease" might be another way of looking at it. And the answer for the most part is... sanely. The book refers to this, "for by this time sanity has returned" "we react sanely and normally" always with the rider that we maintain fit spiritual condition through practicing the principles in all our affairs which is, of course, the sane thing to do.
My disease is a convict in prison, I no longer accept his calls or his mail. None the less my convict is working out in the yard staying fit just waiting for me to get complacent . My higher power helps me keep the key to his prison cell secure, but if I lapse in my vigilance he can break free and raise havoc once more.
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Work like you don't need the money
Love like you've never been hurt, and
dance like no one is watching.
I don't view the disease of alcoholism/addiction as "mine". I refuse to give it that kind of claim of intimate connection to me. I despise the term "substance abuser". I don't abuse the substance-once in the body, it abuses me. It wants to kill me. It does not belong to me; it is an invader. I will do everything possible to defend myself against the enemy.
Aye. I see it something like that. Almost like a possession (as in the exorcist kind). It got hold and made me someone I didn't want to be, and all it did was cause pain and misery to myself and those that loved me.
I've never been old school religious but that is the sort of image I get in my head when I do visualise it. Maybe that is how I rationalise the spiritual component to a physical malady.
From what I understand the disease concept was initated to some degree so hospitals/medical facilities could legitimize it for treatement and for insurance purposes. In the early days Dr. Bob would write a diagnoses of "gastritous", because the hospitals didn't want to treat the hopeless Alcoholics.
I personally don't give the disease concept a lot of traction, once detoxed our recovery is psychic as we are spiritually and morally bankrupt.
Where I got sober, the attitude was we just drank too much too long too often, nobody held a gun to our head and made us drink. IMO most alcoholics have spent most of their lives blaming their problems on someone/something other than themselves.
Accepting responsibility for our alcoholism and our recovery allows us to move forward.
I have often found that those who dwell on the disease concept and scientific reasons for their problems likely slip back into self-pity. I don't think the authors of the BBook really thought alcoholism was a disease either as they write the following: (Our Liquor was but a symptom)
Pg 64
Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.
Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory. This was Step Four
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Rob
"There ain't no Coupe DeVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box."
IMO most alcoholics have spent most of their lives blaming their problems on someone/something other than themselves.
Accepting responsibility for our alcoholism and our recovery allows us to move forward.
I have often found that those who dwell on the disease concept and scientific reasons for their problems likely slip back into self-pity.
I remember a year or two before I got sober I had an interview with a probation officer by whom I was being assessed for sentence. I had heard this modern lingo about childhood issues being responsible for adult behaviour, so I served up what I thought was a real good story of a tough childhood. I must have over cooked it though, because she sent me straight to the nut house!.
Later, when I got sober in AA I remember thinking that even if I knew what caused me to be an alcoholic, like maybe dropped on my head as a child, it wouldn't help my present circumstance, it would just give me someone to blame which I somehow knew wouldn't be good for me. My problem was with me now and what I did about it was my responsibility. As a consequence I never have spent much time dwelling on what might have been the cause. But like you mentioned Rob I have noticed that many who keep navel gazing often keep finding things. Perhaps rule 62 applies. Certainly seeking to place blame distracts from what needs to be done to recover.
