Alcoholism Disease Or Lack Of SelfControl Essay — страница 2

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Genetics has also a lot to do with cancer as well. If your family has long line of cancer victims for example then your chances are high then to get cancer. You don t have a choice to get cancer or not, but you always have a choice when it comes to alcoholism. Which is why I don t believe alcoholism should be labeled as a disease. You have a choice to become an alcoholic or not, but you never have a choice in the matter of getting cancer. When I started looking over the books I had checked out I realized that they were not really what I was looking for until I got to E.M. Jellinek s book. It really intrigued me to find out about why alcoholism is a disease. In 1955 with help from AA and Jellinek, got alcoholism acknowledged as a disease by the World Health Organization. The

reasons why it is considered a disease according to the World Health Organization is that those suffering from the disease differ from those who do not, and that alcoholic drinking results from an involuntary impaired control over drinking and an abnormal craving for alcohol which can be precipitated by just one drink. Jellinek felt that heavy drinking was initially a result of learning and that the disease of alcoholism developed at some point when the drinking becomes increasingly excessive and the body depends on alcohol on a regular basis(Jellinek). I could see a little bit now why it could be labeled as a disease. Yet I still have my doubts. Critics around the Medical world have contested the disease model theory. In 1962 a survey was given following up on the long term

progress of discharged alcoholics. They found that a small amount had been drinking normally for most of the time since discharge. This countered the notions that once an alcoholic always an alcoholic and that total abstinence is the only option. There has been more research that has confirmed these findings. Another experiment was done by a psychiatrist disputing the craving part of the disease alcoholism. She gave small amounts of alcohol either with or without their knowledge. She found that if a patient was unaware that he had consumed alcohol there was little evidence of increased craving or loss of control. When the subjects were told they were drinking alcohol, whether they were or not, reported craving. Which leads me to believe that most of alcoholism is in your head and

that it becomes a disease when your body needs it to survive (Another Empty Bottle). Jellinek also goes over the Social learning model, which says drinking is learned. I am not going to go into depth on this model because I have already stated what is about earlier in the paper. Jellinek though gives some more interesting facts about this model that I didn t have earlier. He says All features of the daily life in the Social learning model operate together to shape how different people will respond differently to life events and circumstances. Only some people, for example, will drink more heavily in response to divorce, bereavement, redundancy, loneliness etc. Some may drink more for a short while and some on a long term basis (Jellinek). Most people s drinking varies over time.

Basically he is saying that alcoholics start out drinking by social drinking and it either rapidly or slowly progresses to the disease alcoholism. Jellinek states that alcoholics develop alcoholism in different ways. Some alcoholics begin drinking to the point of intoxication from their first drink, immediately behaving in ways destructive to health and relationships. Others suffer a progressive disease, beginning with acceptable social drinking. In the early stages of the alcohol consumption the alcoholics tend to depend on alcohol for its mood altering qualities. Drinks are used to perk up, calm down, celebrate, mourn, be sociable, or to withdraw. When it becomes a disease is when alcoholics have no specific reason to drink other than to drink (Another Empty Bottle). I could

probably go on forever about the different theories, models, and etc. My mind though is just in a frenzy trying to figure out what to believe and what not to believe about alcoholism being a disease. Yet there is one thing I can say about the disease known as alcoholism is that I think alcoholism is a little of both a loss of control and a disease. I think it is a disease when your body has to have it in order to survive. Other then that I still don t believe it is a disease from the start until you reach that point. Of course there is also the aspect of you can never be 100% cured from alcohol because there will always be that urge to drink and if you can over come that urge then you can over come alcoholism. I guess the real problem is not the aspect of alcoholism being a