http://www.alcoholism-detox.com/alcoholism_disease.php
Finding the right rehab center can often be a challenge. Drug addiction is a complex situation that requires proper treatment strategies and opportunities for recovery.
Duration : 0:10:0
Ruth started abusing alcohol at a young age, and her abuse to giving birth to a still born baby at the age of 13. She continued to be afflicted through marriage, through service in the military, and throughout a good part of her life.
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Duration : 0:4:36
According to the viewpoint of those within Alcoholics Anonymous, is Alcoholism a disease or a behavioral problem?
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous suggests that it is a disease of the mind and body. A theoretical allergy to alcohol. The AMA lists alcoholism as a mental disorder. AA also suggests that alcoholism is a spiritual malady. I think its a choice to over-drink. I also think our society should teach more clearly what acceptable drinking looks like. In my opinion that is one drink with lunch or dinner.
Anti-Alcohol Video PSA. Public domain public service announcement. Alcoholism is a chronic disease that makes your body dependent on alcohol. You may be obsessed with alcohol and unable to control how much you drink, even though your drinking is causing serious problems with your relationships, health, work and finances. It’s possible to have a problem with alcohol, but not display all the characteristics of alcoholism. This is known as alcohol abuse, which means you engage in excessive drinking that causes health or social problems, but you aren’t dependent on alcohol and haven’t fully lost control over the use of alcohol. Although many people assume otherwise, alcoholism is a treatable disease. Medications, counseling and self-help groups are among the therapies that can provide ongoing support to help you recover from alcoholism. Alcoholism is a disease. It is often diagnosed more through behaviors and adverse effects on functioning than by specific medical symptoms. Only 2 of the diagnostic criteria are physiological (those are tolerance changes and withdrawal symptoms). Alcohol abuse and alcoholism are associated with a broad range of medical, psychiatric, social, legal, occupational, economic, and family problems. For example, parental alcoholism underlies many family problems such as divorce, spouse abuse, child abuse and neglect, welfare dependence, and criminal behaviors, according to government sources.
Duration : 0:0:31
There are people who can drink and not be addicted. There are people who can eat the wrong foods once and a while but not all the time. Then there are people who want nothing more than to stop drinking or stop eating the wrong foods, but fail at every attempt even though their very lives are affected in horrendous ways by it, whether they are too drunk to play with their kids or too fat to run around with them. Do you think food addiction is as real as alcoholism? I know I am opening up an opportunity for some mean spirited answers, but I don’t care. I want to know what the general public thinks, and why nothing more is done for it.
Yes, Food Addiction is DEFINATELY an addiction. Just like drinking, smoking, self-harm, drugs, or any other number of addictions. They all have something in common: They release endorphins.
Eating releases endorphins when you eat stuff that tastes good.
Drinking releases endorphins because your body "loses" control of it’s chemicals and releases just a bit too much when you’re drunk.
Self-harm releases endorphins because when you hurt yourself (example: cutting), your body makes natural painkillers to help you out in your time of pain.
Drugs release endorphins because, well, they just tell the body to not stop releasin’ them. That’s why cocaine/ecstasy addicts become depressed because those endorphin pathways get so tired they break, and nothing (including your "happy chemical" endorphins) can travel across them.
Why isn’t smoking cigarettes a disease also?
I don’t believe it’s a disease. It just givers people an excuse. I believe it’s a CHOICE
still no one answered why alcoholism is a disease and not cigarettes.
They start as a behavior issue, but once physical and mental dependence on the substances begins, then it crosses over into being a disease. You need to look into dopamine and what it does to your brain and body. Then go here, it spells it out quite simply:
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/UBNRP/Dopamine/alcoholtobac.html
This is why addicts need mental health support, biochemical support as well as medical support (for the other diseases that both smoking and alcohol abuse eventually cause) when they are trying to quit coke, cigarettes, booze, crack, whatever.
I hope this explains the situation. In the beginning, it may be a choice, but once addiction sets in and their behavior is driven by that need for that feeling brought on by dopamine, then they are in trouble and it IS a disease. Please do not judge people based on their being addicted or not. I have seen wonderfully talented, educated, brilliant people brought down by this. No one would choose a life driven by drugs that may/ will eventually kill them.
The key to breaking an addiction is to break that dopamine reward loop. So, if you are old enough and smart enough to understand this, go here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OUC4igr3O4sC&pg=PA390&lpg=PA390&dq=dopamine+loop+addicts&source=bl&ots=gxi7UBOomZ&sig=sCdTx5VEWe2ji8a0g7B0MRG1xDc&hl=en&ei=FLP1SZ2GKY-MtgfVnpifDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2
Try searching the mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic system as well.
Sorry, thumbsdowner, but this is NOT a moral issue, it is a medical and biochemical issue. People need support not judgement if they are ever going to break the cycle, and therefore the addiction. Take off the judge’s robes.
I Am sick of people saying Alcoholism is a disease, Cancer is a Disease, Alcoholism is a choice! I just want peoples thoughts on this subject.
It is not a disease. And I am sick and tired of people who want to drink themselves to death taking the better things from us sane people. Everything they need to get better takes from us. The government puts money towards their AAA meetings. And if their stupidity led to homelessness, they are taking money out of our taxes also to eat and have a place to stay in a shelter or maybe even more.
And medical, they somehow get on waiting lists for a liver that someone else needs more that did not hurt thier liver and now they must wait even longer. While the alcoholic has a new liver to destroy.
In my area alot of the alcoholics get more help than they deserve. It is just not fair. I do not pity them. If they want to drink themselves to death then let them. We do not need their drunken asses anyway.
I wish that more people agreed with me on this topic.
I am doing some research for my college class and I need opinions as to why you may think that alcoholism is a disease or why you may think that it is not! If anyone has any life experiences please feel free to elaborate and if you don’t feel comfortable doing so on here please feel free to email me I would love to have a real life story to go along with my research!
Easy
Acute intoxication is a disease in which the person goes through withdrawal this can go from a hangover to DT’s which can be fatal.
Additionally after the acute withdrawal, a person will often have a psychological addiction; they must undergo counseling for this. While alcoholic anonymous has been shown to have a negative success rate (i.e. people relapse more after joining alcoholics anonymous than just trying abstinence on your own) it has a powerful support group. This is because has been defined by the higher courts as a religion, and by many prominent authors as a religious cult. Like all cults, it preys on people during a tough time in their life.
rsearch paper on it
I explain my opinion that alcoholism is not a disease but a choice.