I was talking with some dweeb doctor "professional" about a year ago who was shocked and dismayed (naturally -- it's his livelihood!) -- when I told him I quit drinking without medical supervision. Yes, "medical supervision," that was HIS terminology! He sternly warned me that I might have killed myself, that I had done a very risky thing! *rolls eyes* What, has this guy lived in a cave all his life? I can't think of a single person, even those with DTs when they quit, who killed themselves quitting drinking. But I can think of quite a few who killed themselves (and/or someone else) because they continued drinking.
Alcoholism is no disease, buddy, no matter how often those with a financial and emotional stake in the matter say otherwise. If it's a disease, it's self-inflicted and self-cured. To call it a "disease" is an insult to folks like my now-deceased friend who had MS, or the little girl up the street who has type 1 diabetes, or the elementary school teacher I had whose leg was crippled by polio. Do you for an INSTANT think that if all it took was ceasing the personal indulgence of a recreational behavior to make their symptoms disappear, that they wouldn't do it in a heartbeat? They had/have REAL diseases. Alcoholism is the result of someone who just doesn't want to deal with the fact that life isn't fair and that genetics dealt them a hand in which they -- unlike most people -- cannot handle alcohol, just like genetics deals others a hand in which they -- unlike most people -- are alergic to cats, or strawberries, or penicillin.
Disease, my ass. Stages, schmages. My grandmother told me about how my grandfather had the DTs when he tried to stop drinking. But it wasn't trying to stop that killed him -- it was because he didn't stop.
Don't lecture me about the "stages" of alcoholism. Doctors and the medical profession are as fallible as any other human endeavor. And this crap that quiting alcoholism alone is somehow "dangerous" and that it is a "disease" is just that -- crap.
Reagan was right about simple solutions. The solution to alcoholism or any other addiction is very simple: cease the behavior. It isn't EASY, but it is simple. YOU don't want to believe it, so you make it unnecessarily complicated and arduous and intimidating; your kind of thinking exploits victimhood to the ultimate.
Recreational behavior? You know nothing of alcoholism. When you drive past homeless alcoholics do you really think there's some kind of enjoyment going on. All the people that die of alcoholism is just millions of little parties that somehow spun out of control?
With your advice to alcoholics, which amounts to doing nothing, do you really think that is an origional idea? I mean really. Are you so daft as to think that you are the lone wolf out there with the brilliant idea to "decide" and "really mean it". You know there are millions of alcoholics dying out there today, maybe you can hire yourself out and each one can come to you on a mountain top and you can sit there as some guru, and when they ask "Master, what is the secret to sobriety" you can charge them all a dollar to hear your words of wisdom "make a decision and mean it" and they will all weep in wonder of your awsomeness.
Really, the next time you have an idea, don't
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tcm3IDZ2ho
This is a part of the documentary “rain in my heart”. The second girl on there, “Toni” has esophageal varices. that’s varicose veins in her esophagas. Her throat bleeds into her stoumach. Eventualy she bleeds more than it can be replaced and she dies. Would you mind pointing out the big party she’s got going on in her life? I’d appreciate it.