regarding the reason one becomes, and remains, an alcoholic. Do you feel that people choose to be an alcoholic or do you feel that it is a disease and the individual has little control over it?
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Alcoholism is a serious problem within our society. One of the controversies surrounding alcoholism is?
October 3, 2011 By 8 Comments
I feel that they have control over it, but it takes a great deal of inner strength to exert that control. I feel it is a disease, but like a lot of other diseases, you can choose whether or not you treat it.
I will answer this way, a friend was in court and the Judge asked him if he had a alcohol problem and he said” Only then the bars are closed”
I only know one alcoholic, and I also don’t know what to think.
I don’t think it’s a choice, as myself have an obsession problem (BDD/OCD). I know what’s it’s like to be addicted and not being able to control it.
Studies say alcoholism is genetic (so that’s beyond their control), and others say environmental influences have to do with it. Some alcoholics have family problems, history of abuse, etc that causes them to abuse alcohol to mask the pain.
I do think that people should show more compassion to alcoholics. I tried to talk to my friend about it, but she’s in denial.
With hard work and support, I think it’s possible to overcome it. It’s not going to happen overnight though.
Both. Since we all start out somewhere we choose to drink. And if it evolves over months and years than it may become a disease. An alcoholic I know started out just partying with friends drinking alcohol and then it becomes a bigger issue where he was drinking obsessive amounts of alcohol. In most cases people drink just to get awa from their life. There’s always a reason behind it like for example someone’s parents died and to get away from that feeling they drink to try to escape the pain and relieve it.
I believe alcoholism is an interaction of biology, environment, and behavior. A number of people I have seen have told me that they used alcohol as a means of self-medication. Like many forms of medication, alcohol can become addictive. You can become both psychologically dependent upon it as a way of escaping negative feelings and physically addicted to it in that your body becomes accustomed to its effects, or so it thinks, and you need more and more of it to get the so-called “positive” effect.
Another facet of the problem is that people may be genetically predisposed to addictions in several ways. One of those ways is that they need a higher level of excitation of the pleasure center in their brains (located in the hypothalamus) to feel or sense pleasure. Alcohol may either lower that threshold or trick the brain into thinking it is having more fun than they are by changing sensing and perceiving.
Alcohol is difficult because first it gives you a high, than it gives you a low. It cause changes in your sugar level that produce a similar effect. People are hard-core alcoholics begin to appear “normal” and easier to get along with more AFTER they have been drinking, but if they are away from alcohol for a while, they become irritable, sometimes violent, and hard to reason with. When they become like this, you KNOW they are physically addicted; they could be physically addicted before this.
I don’t think anyone chooses to be an alcoholic; I think they fall into the trap of alcohol and can’t find their way out. It’s just like people don’t choose to have panic attacks, they are tricked into it, possibly seduced into it.
Alcoholism, however, is like depression; people may have it because of their behavior, but eventually the body takes it on as a biological problem. But, as I said earlier, that does not mean that there are not genetic predispositions that underly the choice of this slow “poison”.
i think that disease is a stretch i think that people who are alcoholics are pre disposed to it by family and friends, or have self medicated to the point that they have become addicts.
It is a disease, it is actually listed in the DSM IV the manual for diagnosing mental disorders and alcoholism is a mental disorder.
It may not be the same for everyone. I believe there will be multiple influences with differing degrees of significance for different people. Physiology and where we get our views from, e.g. parents, schooling, peers. And then it becomes a logical downward spiral of mental and physical events.
Ultimately it is our own behaviour made in varying degrees of ignorance. Some know better than others.
No single influence occurs in a vacuum. Various influences affect each other.
The largest folly is to believe that the disease model is significant or helpful. I thought myself into addiction and I thought myself out of it.