Things that alcoholism is: Horrible, Wasteful. Frightening.
Not a disease.
A lifestyle choice.
And it's important to establish the difference.
Because we spend so much time calling this lifestyle choice, this action we take, a disease - that we skip over the obvious - it's an action that gives us diseases.
And we hate that part. Hate that it gives us cancer, and depression. Hate that it is the facilitator of actual illnesses. Which is so bizarre. And unhelpful.
Alcoholism is not something any of us would choose to deliberately, consciously pursue as a lifestyle. But whether we persuade ourselves into it, or are hooked from day one, the fact remains that it is still behaviour. Not affliction.
People get sick from alcoholism, as a result of drinking. They get diseased from this thing they do.
Liver disease. Diabetes. Schizophrenia.
Yet we are so busy holding hands and trying to engage in battle with an imaginary disease that when the actual diseases show up? As a natural consequence to alcohol abuse? We are loath to link them with alcoholism.
It is really important that we address this, because it is something addicted people never talk about. No matter how often it is brought up by medical professionals. Nobody wants to be the one to say it. That a woman who abuses alcohol is exposing herself to massive risk of breast and ovarian cancer. That we are taking our amazing bodies and exposing them to frightening amounts of harm. And when a heavy drinker does get these awful illnesses? A wall of silence around the drinking goes up. It is still not addressed.
There are people who are sick, poorly. Who have these awful illnesses. Who did not drink themselves into it. Anyone who has ever been truly sick would never call alcoholism a disease. For the simple reason that the very nature of actual illness and disease means you cannot pick it up or put it down whenever you choose to. Unlike addiction. Unlike disorders.
I feel so bad for these people. I want to apologise for the way they must feel every time they hear a drunk banging on about the disease they are afflicted with that basically amounts to a hangover. For now anyway...
Alcoholism is an escape from a body you don't want to be in in. Sickness is an inability to participate on the life you have. Drinking is an escape from the life you made that you don't want. Illness is waiting for a conclusion that is completely out of your own hands.
Alcoholism is a choice we keep making every time we drink. And by not taking responsibility for that? By not talking about these uncomfortable truths? We are all letting each other down. Badly. We are sitting back and watching this lifestyle choice lead to real diseases. Then we end up as a load of genuinely sick people who have no concept of linking action to consequence.
Calling it a disease just isolates an alcoholic further, because of the understandable resentment from people who are actually truly sick. The last thing an alcoholic needs is more isolation. And if people are resentful? Then they don't want to understand
Why not just come clean?
I do this thing to myself I don't know how to stop yet. If I don't stop then I will make myself physical unwell. I understand this as a medical probability.
People respond to honesty. It unites us. Then we can all help each other.
Then no one is alone. Irrespective of bodily circumstance.