Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Ridge Creek School / Hidden Lake Academy
Funny article
Anonymous:
--- Quote from: ""SH"" ---The last time I checked the clinical field does consider addiction as a disease. Of course, one has a choice to pick up the bottle or snort the cocaine or pop the pills, but, they consider it a disease because an addict is not capable or does not have the normal ability to say no. Their body thinks it cannot live without the drug/alcohol/nicotine/etc. I have never felt the urge to do something so overwhelming that I couldn't quit, but I have friends who have had to seek professional help, and I can tell you that they don't feel they had a "choice". They felt the addiction consumed them. The statement in the post several posts back about addiction not being a disease is false.
--- End quote ---
More on the subject.
http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/cbook/chap6.html
CHAPTER 6
Why We Should Reject The Disease Concept of Alcoholism*
Herbert Fingarette, Ph. D.
Why do heavy drinkers persist in their behavior even when prudence, common sense, and moral duty call for restraint? That is the central question in debates about alcohol abuse. In the United States, but not in other countries such as Great Britain (Robertson and Heather, 1982), the standard answer is to call the behavior a disease—"alcoholism"—whose key symptom is a pattern of uncontrollable drinking. This myth, now widely advertised and widely accepted, is neither helpfully compassionate nor scientifically valid. It promotes false beliefs and inappropriate attitudes, as well as harmful, wasteful, and ineffective social policies.
The myth is embodied in the following four scientifically baseless propositions:
1) Heavy problem drinkers show a single distinctive pattern of ever greater alcohol use leading to ever greater bodily, mental, and social deterioration.
2) The condition once it appears, persists involuntarily: the craving is irresistible and the drinking is uncontrollable once it has begun.
3) Medical expertise is needed to understand and relieve the condition ("cure the disease") or at least ameliorate its symptoms.
4) Alcoholics are no more responsible legally or morally for their drinking and its consequences than epileptics are responsible for the consequences of their movements during seizures.
The idea that alcoholism is a disease has always been a political and moral notion with no scientific basis. It was first promoted in the United States around 1800 as a speculation based on erroneous physiological theory (Levine, 1978), and later became a theme of the temperance movement (Gusfield, 1963). It was revived in the 1930s by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), who derived their views from an amalgam or religious ideas, personal experiences and observations, and the unsubstantiated theories of a contemporary physician (Robinson, 1979).
*This is a slightly edited version of an article in press to be published In The Harvard Medical School Mental Health Letter. By permission of Harvard University, copyright owner.
Anonymous:
That is one side of the debate, but there have been studies done on certain groups of peoples, such as Native Americans, that show that their genetics create, in a larger proportion than the regular population, the propensity to become alcoholics. How do you explain that if its only the person's "choice" that they become alcoholics? I am not saying that people don't have the power to change their addiction themselves, without a treatment center, or incarceration, because I think they do, but to just say that it's the addict's fault and that they are just weak is completely unfair to those trying to quit their addiction. A true addict has a very hard time saying no, something us non-addicts will never truly understand.
Anonymous:
--- Quote from: ""SH"" ---That is one side of the debate, but there have been studies done on certain groups of peoples, such as Native Americans, that show that their genetics create, in a larger proportion than the regular population, the propensity to become alcoholics. How do you explain that if its only the person's "choice" that they become alcoholics?
--- End quote ---
From TFA (apparently reading for comprehension isn't one of your strong suits)
Recent studies have also been said to imply that alcoholism is a hereditary disease. But that is not what the genetic research shows. In the first place, these studies provide no evidence of a genetic factor in the largest group of heavy drinkers—those who have significant associated problems but are not diagnosable as alcoholics. Even among the minority who can be so diagnosed, the data suggest that only a minority have the pertinent genetic background. And even in this category, a minority of a minority, studies report that the majority do not become alcoholics (Goodwin, et al., 1973; Cloninger, et al., 1981; Deitrich and Spuhler, 1984).
It is not only misleading but dangerous to regard alcoholism as a genetic disorder. Heavy drinkers without alcoholism in their genetic backgrounds are led to feel immune to serious drinking problems, yet they have the greatest total number of problems. On the other hand, people who do have some hereditary disposition to alcoholism could easily become defeatist. Their risk is higher, and they should be aware of that, but their fate is still very much in their own hands.
--- Quote ---I am not saying that people don't have the power to change their addiction themselves, without a treatment center, or incarceration, because I think they do, but to just say that it's the addict's fault and that they are just weak is completely unfair to those trying to quit their addiction. A true addict has a very hard time saying no, something us non-addicts will never truly understand.
--- End quote ---
I've been diagnosed an addict. It's all bullshit. Educate yourself.
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-addmonst.html
TheWho:
--- Quote ---MODS: This is The Who posting more spam! Let's give this asshole the final heave-ho, shall we? Please DELETE The Who's recent anonymous postings and ban his new IP address.
--- End quote ---
Agreed!! Why dont we go one better and delete any post that disagrees with our beliefs (spam), especially if they dont have the guts to get a log-in (like the guest above mentioned). Give them one warning and then ban their friggin asses after 3 posts and boot their butts into never-never land, if they dont change their position.
This will clear the board for the rest of us who know whats good for everyone else.
::hatter::
Anonymous:
My mother lives next door to a Cherokee Indian Reservation. She has seen first hand the number of alcoholics in proportion to the rest of the population, in comparison to european americans. I am sure your comments you copied and posted will fall on deaf ears to those who live with alcoholism on the reservation. What do you propose? That these Cherokee peoples just want to drink themselves to death? I don't think so.
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