There are diseases that involve choice that are still accepted to be diseases…for example, lung cancer. People choose to smoke. Even in heart disease, people make choices as to diet and lifestyle, which influence their risk. A number of authorities who think it may not be helpful to think of alcoholism strictly as a disease.

Initially it allowed people to treat alcoholics in a humane way, rather than a dehumanized way. But there are definitely some problems with
the disease model. Many people do not fit the classic model, but nevertheless they have significant problems with abuse. People who do not have
physical dependency, which do not have long histories of drinking problems, who do not have significant psychological and social problems, they don’t fit the disease model.

If we have a disease with a physical component, is a spiritual approach the best way to treat it? For instance, the Alcoholics Anonymous treatment, which focuses on, among other things, admitting wrongs to God and getting closer to him.

Some experts believe that some alcoholics who have the characteristics he mentions suffer from a disease. But others, with lesser alcohol abuse problems, may not. There are more of them than there are of the classic alcoholics. The idea that alcoholism is a disease rests as much on belief and conjecture as it does on scientific evidence.

The disease model of alcoholism has been no more productive of positive therapy outcomes than have any of the countless, uni-dimensional views of alcoholism that coexist with it.

In some ways that alcoholism has been viewed since the mid-19th century, when alcoholism was considered, to be a spiritual weakness. So the treatment was to throw the drunkards in jail and have clergy come and work with them.

The temperance movement blamed the problem not on the alcoholics but on the alcohol itself and moved to have it prohibited. After prohibition, the notion arose that alcohol was a disease. Alcoholics Anonymous fostered that notion from its
inception in the 1930s, according to a spokeswoman who, in accordance with AA practice, asked to remain anonymous.

After World War II, psychologists blamed personality defects and conflicts and prescribed psychotherapy. In the 1950s, some pointed a finger at the ready availability of alcohol and social norms that condoned drinking.

The problem with all these models is that they tend to emphasize one cause in isolation from everything else. They view alcoholism as resulting from the angers individual’s — interaction with his or her environment.

It’s more complex than saving it’s a disease or not a disease. Treatment of alcoholism can be tailored to each individual depending upon which factors
seem to have contributed most to his condition. The idea that alcoholism is a
disease has political implications, too.

It says there’s only a certain class of people who are going to have problems with alcohol, and they can’t drink. Everybody else can drink with impunity. And so the liquor industry supports the notion.

For-profit alcoholism treatment centers also stand to gain from the 30-day stay that many of them require for alcoholism, Hester says. Nevertheless, evidence continues to mount that alcoholism can be the result of biological
disorders. Interestingly the sons of alcoholics have a decreased reaction to modest amounts of alcohol and characteristically have altered brain waves.

Filed under: Alcoholism, Alcoholism