Hawkpower":1w5kpsyg said:
I don't. I understand that they call it that, but I think of a disease as something that can't be stopped by will power. I understand some people have a genetic predisposition to addiction--my family has been turned upside down by it--but if those people don't try it, you can't become addicted. It's just that simple.
What about food? How many people in this Country are overweight and literally killing themselves by overeating. Think that all of them can just snap their fingers and poof they stop eating the crap that makes them so overweight? Or maybe as you suggest, they should not try to eat food in the first place?
Are you denying there are mental diseases? Addiction is a mental disease; can't you understand that? Why do you think we have so many mental facilities in this Country? Because with just a little 'will power' they can fix themselves?
9 Sark didnt catch Alcoholism. Nor did it strike him out of no fault of his own.
Comparing being an alcoholic to being born with an unavoidable disease is kind of insulting.
I sympathize with the struggle, I just think they are different things.
Take offense or not but this topic is out of several people's scope. The American Medical Association can speak to this topic better than anyone in this thread.
The American Medical Association (AMA) had declared that alcoholism was an illness in 1956. In 1991, The AMA further endorsed the dual classification of alcoholism by the International Classification of Diseases under both psychiatric and medical sections.
Also the definition of disease from the dictionary
NOUN
a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury:
"bacterial meningitis is a rare disease"
synonyms: illness · sickness · ill health · infection · ailment ·
[more]
a particular quality, habit, or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person or group of people:
"departmental administration has often led to the dread disease of departmentalitis"
I don't recall Sark sharing his HiPPA protected info such as diagnosis, so what he has is or doesn't is not something we know- unless he did share his multiaxial diagnosis? With the problems he does have due to alcohol a diagnosis of alcohol addiction is not far fetched.