[McGowdog]

Originally Posted by DimSumRaja

if you want to learn more about alcoholism, an excellent resource is to attend either Alcoholics Anonymous, or Al-Anon, you will get a lot more information there, and it is more in depth and more accurate, then what you will get on this board. Also the questions you pose and ponder and are exploring indicate you would personally benefit from attending Al-Anon. Alcoholism is a disease classified by the American Medical Association.

I guess there is some misunderstanding about Alcoholics, Alcoholism, the disease concept, the addiction concept, etc.

I disagree that alcoholics are addicts. It's different and I'd described what I've learned and experienced on it here:

Drug addicts and alcoholics are different. Anybody can be a drug addict. Anybody can be a non-addict. I'm addicted to coffee right now. If I quit, I'd suffer. But in time, I'd no longer be addicted to coffee. Same thing with heroin. If you took 100 people and pumped them with heroin for 30 days, you'd have 100 addicts. Remove the heroin. They all jones. Pump them with heroin again. The craving goes away. Not so with alcoholism. The craving in that disease increases. Some addictions such as Cocaine may be slightly similiar to alcohol- some are now finding.

You can't make an alcoholic out of a non- alky. You also can't make a non-alky out of an alky. These things are different. I guarantee you. Here's how you run this experiment; take a 100 people and put them in the Alcohol Hotel. Feed them alcohol for breakfast, lunch and dinner. After 30 days, tell them all they're free to go. 90 people will go running outta there. 10 people will want to sign a 30-year mortgage. Now take those ten people and take their alcohol away. They jones. Now give them their alcohol again. They feel relieved, but their craving starts there and grows from there.

Now that's just the physical part. The mental obsession is another part of the equation that requires what may look like an "addiction" to you; they keep going to meetings. Once in a while something works and they change in a positive way. AKA, they "taste the honey" and they go back for more. Some religious and/or church going people get this too, but not all. But the mental obsession is what tells you you're cured now and you can handle your booze. Meanwhile, the liver and other organs that would process the alcohol back into simple sugars for a normal person leave a residual of acetone in the alky and sets up a craving for more of the same. This process NEVER EVER occurs in the non-alky. The mental obsession for the addict may be similiar. Some talk about dopamines, endorphins, THIQ (supposedly present in alkies and heroin addicts), etc. The scientists are doing their stuff, but the things that haven't changed are alcohol, the alky, the recovery process.

The people in recovery that I know that "do the program" have no problem separating spirituality (saving your urse) from religion (saving your soul). The good thing about 12 step is that it crosses all bounds such as race, religion, politics, creeds, socio-economic status, orientation, age, gender, etc.

Now as to why some are alcoholics and other's aren't, I've described my experience and what I've learned here:

We've been squishing grapes for 5000+ years (7500 years?) and regardless of the abuse of alcohol through the annuls of time, GOD has chose to keep a minimum of 10% of alkys in our fine population.

Most DO die out over time, but 10% remains for some reason. Maybe alky's are the only ones with the bawls to see the pure Truth-albeit, from time to time.

The Jewish and Italian culture have been around alcohol for so long, alcoholism is rare amongst them. Now, for Native Americans and the Eskimo, they've only seen the hard stuff (distilled whiskey brought to the Appalacians from Irish and Scottish immigrants) for like 300 years. They statistically have a very high death rate, even compared to those of European decent, such as myself. I have family who can handle their booze. Heredity is part of it. Not all, methinks.

Now, if you're referring to those binge drinkers from frat parties and the peer pressures of our youth, I refer to that as Amateur Night! Some of those, although not all alkys, will die for you! Some of them are what I'd call situational hard drinkers.

Read a book called Under The Influence. Take what you need, leave the rest.

Solomon spoke of alcoholism. Yet our experts here on CD seem to think it's a new phenomena. How Novel! Noah was one of my heroes. He had a little drinking problem, by the way. God loved him. May He love you too. Oh, Socrates? How did he die?