Alcoholism: Disease, Learned Behavior, or Both? Why AA Is Wrong About Alcoholics.

Is alcoholism a disease? Alcoholics Anonymous seems to think so. But for those seeking alcoholic addiction recovery their worldview fails most. Because Alcoholics Anonymous is wrong in their premise.

BOOKS FOR RECOVERY AND REINVENTION

THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK.
https://www.amazon.com/SMALL-BOOK-ALCOHOLISM-ALCOHOLICS-DOESNT/dp/B08VCJ4ZPT

THE SHEPHERD AND THE RUNNINGWOLF: A PATH TO FORGIVENESS ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL
https://www.amazon.com/SHEPHERD-RUNNINGWOLF-Forgiveness-Pacific-Crest/dp/B08P1FCC7G

REINVENTION OF SELF: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND BEING FOREVER
https://www.amazon.com/REINVENTION-SELF-CHANGE-BEING-FOREVER/dp/B08PJWKXHC

To listen to the deconstruction of former AA members who escaped the cult and others who don't adhere to the rooms check out their channels below:

Transcript

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The addiction of alcoholism, is it really a disease or is it something else? Well I'm gonna give my nickels worth and once again probably upset everyone sitting in the rooms. The aged old debate, is alcoholism a disease or is it learned behavior? Is it a combination of both? If you walk into Alcoholics Anonymous meetings right after you walk out of the inferno of initial detox, the sponsors and longtime gurus will indoctrinate you immediately. Alcoholism is a disease. You are an addict, you will always be an addict, you will always be diseased. Recovery never ends. And it's true that in 1956 the medical community acknowledged that alcoholism is an illness, and since that declaration, now inching toward a century ago, it has been shown that the neurological system and brain undergoes transformation with heavy and chronic alcohol use. They have shown the infamous alcoholic gene as well, that just sets up the poor soul for failure with alcohol once he first puts that bottle to his lips. I wouldn't argue that the brain does undergo changes with prolonged heavy alcohol use, a poisonous coursing through it every day and in heavy amounts. I wouldn't argue that the person is in a state of illness when he is an alcoholic. But he didn't just catch a disease like cancer or multiple sclerosis. It is completely self-induced, regardless of the reasons. A few items must be noted with this so-called disease. First, the medical community isn't remotely unanimous in this thinking. Surveys have shown that 49% of doctors actually don't classify chronic alcoholism as a disease. And in one source, 75% surveyed gave result that it stems from personality and or emotional disorders. So the AA community can stop acting like this is Yahweh's law dropped from Mount Sinai. Second, the medical community tends to drift towards whatever is a trend in society. I know that as a provider. Decades ago, the American Medical Association determined that obesity is a disease. No, it's not, Almighty Doctor. We didn't have this rampant problem in the 1970s because we had a much better lifestyle. We now have a lazy population that sits on its iPhone while eating garbage at McDonald's. Many medical doctors also state that much of this chronic pain epidemic stems from the mysterious disease fibromyalgia, which has no origin and tends to reside in patients with high anxiety, poor lifestyle, and usually a combination of both. Political correctness also affects the thinking of medical providers in my former field of physical therapy and in the MD community. But as time passes, the medical community is beginning to drift away from the idea that alcoholism is a disease. And the concept never was certain established fact, regardless of a constant wail from the rooms. But I can tell you that there are certain characteristics that all diseases have that makes an easy common sense determination of whether someone has a disease or not. A disease is something that happens to the person, usually through no fault of their own. You have a pain in your abdominal region that doesn't go away, and one day the scans reveal pancreatic cancer. You start to lose the ability to walk for no reason and find out that the famous ballplayer's ghost, Lou, has decided to haunt your house. You were born with diabetes type 1 and found this out at five years old. These are all diseases. Now I know I'm gonna get a comment that cries, what about the lung cancer or cirrhosis of the liver from cigarettes and whiskey? These didn't just happen. Now you're talking from both sides of your mouth, Charles. Yes, they did just happen. The root of the now diseases for these people was the abuse of these substances, true. Some people get away with the abuse, and some don't. Just like if I eat too much sugar well into my later years, I might develop diabetes type 2. The poor choice led to the disease. But the choice itself to abuse these substances certainly doesn't fall into the disease category. The physical disease may develop later. The second reason that alcoholism is not a disease is because a disease has three paths that it could follow. These are paths that have been in medicine since the dawn of time, when the first rustic doctor used his neighbor's sharpened rock to perform surgery. Many techniques in medicine were wrong in the history of medicine, but the method of thought when dealing with disease has always been the same, whether it was in Caesar's time or today. The first one is it can be cured. How many patient histories have I read that showed cancer 20 years ago and the cancer with treatment went into remission and never came back? How about the person who had a tumor that was discovered that was removed and underwent radiation therapy as a precaution and basically eliminated the cancer, the disease? You don't walk into the doctor's office and he determines that you developed alcoholism and he gives a series of treatments which cures the alcoholism. This would be because alcoholism is not cured medically. It's cured by refusing to touch the alcohol again. And this is a fundamental flaw with AA philosophy. They not only believe that you have a disease, they believe it can never be cured. But many of us are countering this irrational thinking. I am cured of alcoholism. Others who are on social media attacking the AA method are claiming cure as well. We are not only cured, but are not leading the toxic lives that you see in the circles of the rooms. Other programs are claiming the word cure at high rates. We are starting to put cracks in the erroneous foundation of the AA Tower. We stopped being addicts because we stopped indulging in alcohol use. But we aren't cured from a disease, we are cured from an addiction. The second path a disease might take if it can't be cured is management. Diabetes type 1 is managed with insulin. Certain non-progressive types of MS can be managed. There are medications for certain real chronic pain ailments like polymyalgia rheumatica. These methods don't cure these diseases but makes a life better for those who suffer from them. Alcoholics Anonymous thinks they are managing a disease by going to the rooms constantly. Again, you are managing something that isn't a disease but a prior addiction. Or go, you are convincing your members that they need to devote themselves to AA mentality for the rest of their lives. Well, first, you have a dismal success rate. Second, how come so many of us who left AA remain sober and need no further intervention? The reason is because we realize that alcoholism is a choice. We understood that we had to investigate what caused our addiction besides your claim that it was genetic. And we found that it was usually rooted in past childhood traumas, reinforced many times by family members who are alcoholics. This gives great ammunition to the doctors who are firing that the cause of alcoholism is personality and emotional deficits, that it is more instilled and learned. For if AA was correct, then we shouldn't be able to stay sober without them. Not only are many of us sober today, but our lives are far more advanced on all of our planes than those who sit every night in a toxic circle, filling their lungs outside at the brakes with nicotine and continued addictive mindset. The third path that a disease can follow is it simply kills you. You can undergo treatment for cancer, and the cancer takes you anyway in the end. It can be managed for a time, maybe, but once the reaper sees the person across the field, he breaks into a lockstep march to take them. The rooms will now cry, wait a minute, how many of us did alcoholism take? How many die from alcoholism every year? Yes, many people die from alcoholism. I had a patient who was the nicest guy in the world. I told him he needed to cross over to our side of sobriety. He didn't quit drinking and he died in his late 50s, and that is very sad. But he died because of his choice not to quit drinking. He didn't have a course of treatment that simply failed. The failure was to not put the bottle down from his lips. He had been to AA, by the way. Thanks for absolutely not helping this guy with your screwed-up worldview. The doctors who stand on the side of reason clearly see the differences in diagnosis between a disease and an addiction. They understand the physiological changes that happen once the person is in an addiction for a long enough period of time. But they conclude it is the addiction that harms the person, not some random disease that just happens to enter the addict's body. Many who grew up surrounded by alcoholism chose in their early youth never to touch alcohol. That is a choice. When I did touch alcohol intermittently in my late teen years, that was a choice. When I kept large amounts of alcohol strictly to the weekends in my early 20s, that was a choice. When I began drinking every night in my late 20s, that was a choice. When I knew I had a severe problem in my early 30s, but kept visiting my friend John Barleycorn, that continued to be a choice. And when I ended that friendship with him at age 40, that was the first good choice I made with alcohol. It has been a choice to never touch it again, and I've honored that decision for 17 years now. I never had a disease. I developed an addiction. Possibly my genes were more prone to become addicted. I would grant that. But no one who is drinking 12 to 15 beers a night, as I was in the end, thinks this is normal. The choice was still there whether my DNA was more prone to the barley or not. And I'm very grateful that I never bought the AA mantra that I am forever an addict who needed to live in the rooms. For if I thought I was diseased and deficit, my life wouldn't have been one-tenth of what it has evolved to today. Now if you found this content helpful, go ahead and follow along and subscribe. And for a tale of my own personal reinvention on a 2600-mile trail, check out my work, The Shepherd and the Running Wolf, A Path to Forgiveness on the Pacific Crest Trail. Link is in the description, and it's usually free on KDP. And remember, keep your contract. Be sober at sundown, and I will see you at the next sunrise.