by Christyl Rivers

Created on: August 12, 2010

An addiction is not a disease.  If addiction to alcohol, or any other substance or activity  Is to be defined as a disease, then we have to change the definition of the word to include compulsive over-eating, gambling, sex, shopping, even our addiction to fossil fuels.

 It may be better for everyone to think of our addiction to gas guzzling cars as a disease, but it does not serve medical science in the sense that everything known about illness, immunology, and even genetic disease would have to be reconstructed.

 AA depends upon a person declaring they are helpless to overcome alcoholism.Would a reputable physician sit down with a patient and say, “First of all, your cancer is something over which you are powerless, you are helpless. It is bigger than you.”  This would be horrendous on so many levels.  If that doctor continued, and said, “Now Cindy, you are only twelve years old, and an atheist, therefore, if you cannot force yourself to believe in a higher power, you, who are powerless to influence your cancer, DO have the power to make it worse.”   Complaints to hospitals would justifiably increase.  It is not in any way justifiable to call Alcoholism, or any other addictions, a disease.

 For every person who believes, and many have, that they can overcome, or at least cope with alcoholism by viewing it as a disease, that is great.  But for each such person, is another person who upon feeling they have a “disease” is that much more willing to reach for the bottle, or the bong, or the bottle of pills, or the slot machine.  There have been countless examples of this even within my own extended family.

 The study of medicine should not be confused with the study of help groups, or even the good intentions of those people who attempt to go cold turkey on their own and over-come addiction.  That said, it is just as real a threat to modern peoples that medications are over-prescribed, and definitely over advertised.  Although people who take them may have had symptoms of actual disease, they become dependent upon those medications in some cases long after the disease in gone.  Pain medications, and more recently sleep medications, fall into this sad dependency cycle.  Allow yourself the freedom to have three sleepness nights; it’s better than a self-esteem destroying cycle of dependency.

 Despite record profits for pharmacy industries and their shareholders, there is a public and environmental cost to over-prescription of medicine.  There is also a thriving black market for them, and this feeds into the addiction maladies of our society.  Many, many profiteers have a keen interest in seeing you believe you have an illness, or that you have a disease, when all you really may have is an addiction you can admit you are NOT powerless over.  In fact, most people hugely underestimate their own power.

 If you believe you have an addiction or an illness of any kind, first look into connection with all those things you feel alienated from, be they spouse, society, nature, belonging, normalcy.  You will find you are not alone, and although you may not have a disease, there are cures, that do not require you to put toxins into your body.

Learn more about this author, Christyl Rivers.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.