Alcoholism A Disease C

There are many debates as to whether

Alcoholism is in fact a legitimate disease

and while I often hear people argue that it is not and leverage their point by

comparing it to the conventional idea of

what a disease is, I feel the problem is in the word disease more than the word

“Alcoholism”. While I’m not going to get into

the dictionary definitions of either, I believe that my first hand experience is definition for myself.

My father was what is called a functional alcoholic. My brother and I never noticed him acting drunk or stumbling or getting moody, he was just dad. Folding-laundry-while-watching-his-football-with-his-glass-of-wine-Dad, so his disease was far less noticeable then when I met a boyfriend by the name of Max. Max was a fall-down-drunk, the kind of sloppy drunk that could be happy one minute and in a rage the next. Both men would not stop drinking and both men completely believed they could if they wanted to. While my father never suffered humiliation at the hands of himself, he never had a rock bottom to get to before he died at the age of 56 from cancer. Max on the other hand has humiliated himself countless times. All of us have family a family history involving the consistent use of alcohol and all of us with a tendency towards extreme introversion. As I always say, alcohol is not the problem, it’s use is the symptom of whatever is going on in the deep, dark corners of your mind that even you may not consciously be fully aware of at any given moment. For some people, alcohol is used in the same way as people that self-medicate with food. The disease isn’t the method of which you choose to escape from it, the disease may in fact be an inability to recognize or admit deeper issues. This causes a body to be without ease or in a state of dis-ease. The problem is not in the word, "Alcoholism".

Alcoholism A Disease

Raging Alcoholic