Addiction or illness- choice or no choice

I wonder if the problem is to do with acceptance of alcohol? Fat shaming, blaming overweight people for all their own ailments and for allegedly bringing the NHS to its knees seems to be acceptable, even from people like Health Ministers who really should know better. Recreational drugs are reviled, criminalised, bring about prison sentences, even in some countries the death sentence, but public treatment of drinking excessive amounts of alcohol is very different. I am not talking about people clutching cans of strong lager and living on the streets; I am talking about people in the public eye, celebrities if you will; laughing, joking about excessive alcohol consumption. I once watched, horror struck as Sharon Osborne lurched on to stage at an awards ceremony; she was so plastered that she was slurring and staggering, couldnt find her own backside with both hands ( as my Grandad would have said), and yet, this was somehow funny?????If she had staggered on stage snorting cocaine there would have been a storm of protest, if she had wandered on eating a pork pie there would probably have been adverse comments about her diet/weight/unhealthy food, but somehow this disgusting display was funny. While there is this attitude then there will never be true understanding of the terrible lives lived in families of alcoholics.

Thanks for your comments - it is odd he lasted so long. He was a physical and mental wreck, and his doctor used to get very directive with him and tell him he was killing himself, but strangely he had no liver disease. He survived because my mother looked after him well. I have since found out that although liver problems are very common with excessive drinking, they are not inevitable. We just tend to hear less about them.

Other people have experienced far worse than we did, because he was never actually violent - I feel very sad for you, KatyK.

It's notable that many of the problems of alcohol manifest themselves behind closed doors.

There is nothing glamorous or funny about drunkeness. The people who are the life and soul of the party after a few drinks are actually crashing bores, and self-centred with it, because they refuse to listen to people who love them who tell them they have a problem.

Sorry - I meant we tend to hear less about problems other than liver disease.

I thought a disease was something person had no chose in but drink, drugs, gambling,shopping, cleaning etc anything that you cannot function daily without having is an addiction.

There are several posts on this thread describing how alcoholics abused themselves and members of their families and how awful it was. I understand all that. What I don't understand is why anyone would do that to themselves unless there was something wrong with them. Alcoholism is an addiction, like nicotine addiction or heroin addiction. I think it's not a simple choice between drinking alcohol and not drinking alcohol. Everything I've read about alcohol addiction suggests to me that the drinking is a compulsion that can only be overcome by gargantuan efforts and then complete avoidance of the problem drug.

To me, having a compulsion like that is like an illness even if it isn't an illness. So I still think that alcoholism, or other drug addiction, is an affliction. I don't think it's something someone in their right mind would choose, which in turn suggests that they are not in their right mind when they overdose on alcohol and their behaviour and health deteriorates as a result.

Very well put Bags

Yep, bags is spot on.

I think there's a danger of confusing the causes of alcoholism, which are varied but can include psychological or mental health problems, with the addiction itself. So drinking or drug abuse can begin as a coping strategy to deal with other problems.

I suppose what I'm saying is that alcoholism may be caused by some sort of mental illness, and it will very likely cause mental and physical illness and possibly death. That doesn't mean that it's an illness in itself. There are many models to explain addiction and the medical or illness model is only one of them, and is not universally accepted even by the medical profession (hence the Max Pemberton article I posted on the other thread). I think GillT57 is quite right about the fact that alcoholics are viewed differently because alcohol is acceptable in our culture. We don't generally afford drug addicts the same degree of sympathy.

elena - my father died at 69 and there was no trace of liver disease. He was a chain smoker too and to be honest I don't ever remember him being ill in his whole life. He was very good looking (a real Irish charmer to the outside world) and used this to full effect with his constant womanising. It is very naïve of me to say this but if only people would stop and think of the psychological effect on their children of what they are doing. No child should live in constant fear, it stays with you for life. I am quite fearful of life in general now and me and all my siblings have suffered with depression and severe anxiety. None of my brothers and sisters have ever felt as good as other people, although we have all had decent jobs and good marriages. I would add that some of his violent outbursts were when he was sober so maybe nightowl's theory of mental illness comes into play somewhere. Strange how you get through these things as a child but then in later life it seems to come back to haunt you.

at the end of the day, whatever the reasons, the causes- there is always a choice- however hard, however difficult - some make that choice- for love.
Agreeing that it is a VERY difficult choice, and that full support and sympathy must be given - to say there is NO choice, because it is an illness- is WRONG and fatalist. Because if there is no choice for alcohol- there is not choice for violence, for crime, for sexual predation, for ....

Humans do and have the choice- and that is the whole point. It is however perhaps much harder for some than others to make the 'right' choice,I agree.

I posted on the Charles Kennedy thread before coming across this one so won't repeat that fairly long post.

I agree with night owl's post at 16.43 about the danger of confusing the causes of alcoholism with the addiction itself. Abuse of alcohol can be triggered by many things, including "enjoying a drink". KatyK and elena, as well as others, have posted about the long term impact on the children of alcoholics/drug addicts, from their own experience. I am not unsympathetic and I empathise with the stresses and strains in the lives of those who become dependent or addicted to drugs or alcohol. They have choice, their loved ones do not.

I don't feel it's helpful to categorise addictions/dependencies simply as illnesses. As others have said, most of us have no choice about the health problems we experience whereas drinkers/smokers/drug users have a choice each and every time they use their drug of choice. I'm not saying it's easy but I do believe we all have some choices about the way we live our lives. Those of us who are parents have responsibilities as well. There was a news item recently about the parents of a baby who spent the day in a Manchester city centre bar, leaving their child in the blaze of the sun whilst the mother drank 2 bottles of wine and the father enjoyed 9 pints of extra strong lager. Fortunately, waiters called the NSPCC who in turn called the police. GMP managed to locate the couple, whose home was littered with empty cans/alcohol bottles. The baby was taken into police protection and placed with its grandmother.

nightowl and others, could a cause of alcoholism be stress in the sense of someone turning to alcohol (or another drug) because of stress that they are having difficulty dealing with? Could stress at certain levels be a mental health issue?

iam, I don't think anyone is categorising alcoholism (or another addiction) as 'simply' an illness, or even as 'simply' anything. It is clearly something very complex or it wouldn't be so difficult to overcome.

I don't think calling alcoholism an illness or a disease gives someone permission to carry on drinking. The thing about most illnesses is that there is almost always either a cure or a way to control the illness, and addiction is not obviously (to me) any different.

I think that's what I was trying to say thatbags but found it difficult to put across. I do think 'stress' (in this case shorthand for almost any kind of mental health issue or psychological problem) is the 'illness' and drinking (or drug abuse) is the individual's chosen strategy to cope with that stress. So it's often used, for example, by people who have suffered childhood trauma as a way of self-medicating for the pain they continue to feel. In that sense, the alcoholism is not the illness, but the chosen 'cure'. Of course it doesn't work and it leads to other problems and measurable physical illnesses, but it's still not the alcoholism that's the illness, IMO. I'm still not sure I'm making any sense, but I know what I mean

I don't by any means think this is the only cause of alcoholism or drug addiction. Both can start as purely recreational activities that lead over time to dependence and addiction. I think that can be equally hard to reverse, but I think the treatments would be different as there is no underlying psychological cause for the addiction in the first place, IYSWIM.

Yes, I see what you mean. Thanks.

nightowl If I understand you correctly, you seem to be saying that alcoholism is a symptom, rather than a disease, illness, or condition in its own right.

I can see that might be so in some cases, but would you accept that there is a difference between heavy drinking, where an individual is still consuming 'unhealthy' amounts of alcohol, but retains control and choice over whether they drink or not, and alcoholism/addiction where that element of control has gone?

Well put, nightowl Alcohol counsellors often talk about alcohol dependent people 'self-medicating' with alcohol. As with many people with a drug habit, they use alcohol or other substances to feel 'normal' once dependency has taken its hold. Not attending to the underlying difficulties of coping without such substances makes recovery all the more difficult. Even people who drink too much because their lifestyle is centred around socialising or relaxing with alcohol find they have to address how differently they will live without automatically fuelling themselves up with drink.

That makes sense to me nightowl. I don't think anyone would choose to actually become addcted to alcohol, or anything else really.

Sure no one chooses to be dependent or addicted, but some choose to try and conquer it , while others don't think they have a problem. Some try and fail, but at least they try.

No one on this forum has mentioned the issue of people addicted to prescription drugs and I'm not surprised because it's not often mentioned in other media, yet it is a serious problem. The drugs in question are usually high-end painkillers that were prescribed following, say, a serious accident or, as in a case that many of us will remember reading about here a few years ago, botched surgery. The patient will have had no idea that his or her prescribed medication was going to cause addiction further down the line. However, once it has, what is this person going to do?

Seek help to lose the addiction?

Or rather cope with the addiction

Does is it actually matter whether addiction is called an illness? Many addictions are dire conditions and the process of overcoming them is long, hard and infinitely painful – worse, in many ways, than the addiction itself. It requires constant mental effort as well as physical endurance. The former will never go away although the latter may if the addict can quit. Few people set out to become alcoholics or drug addicts but having become an addict, it is immeasurably difficult to face up to the lifelong task of overcoming that addiction. Debating whether it is an illness is just an opportunity for some people to be self-righteous.

Are you truly saying that those people who have come on this thread to say how much they suffered due to the alcoholism or other addictions of loved ones/parents, are self righteous? Really?

Some people granjura, some people.