Posted on 01/15/2014 5:01:11 PM PST by SMGFan
Your arguments are really poor. What do I care if you’re foolish.
Addiction is not a disease.
If it can kill you then it’s a disease. Some people have beaten cancer, a disease, and lived.
Some die of suicide, a mental illness, that becomes a disease when they die from the illness.
The flu is an illness but it can kill you if you get advanced pneumonia which is then cause of death.
This entire discussion started with the premise that if you put something into your body then it’s not a disease (alcoholics) while cancer is a disease.
I disagree with that statement and used anorexia as an example. Things aren’t always black and white.
“The alcoholic din’t [sic] want to be alcoholic any more than the cancer patient wanted to be a cancer patient.”
Forget what anyone “wanted.” The alcoholic has the distinct advantage of being able to change his/her condition by deciding not to pick up the next drink.
A lung cancer patient, even one who brought about his/her disease by smoking, can’t stop the disease by not lighting up again.
Saying alcoholism is a disease akin to cancer only excuses the alcoholic’s behavior. It’s not so much a disease as an addiction due to psychological issues, and those can frequently be overcome through AA or similar. You can’t go to a support group meeting to cure cancer.
The brain is the most “physical” part of the human body.
We can live without a spleen, gall bladder, urinary bladder, most of the intestinal tract and have our anus sewn together.
We can live with one kidney, a partial liver, one lung, no limbs, no gonads, no breasts, lymph system reduced.....but we can not live without a functioning brain stem unless on support.
Mental illness is a disease that can progress to death of the physical body.
Just like an insect bite can cause an illness that turns into plague and death. Just as a bacterial infection can lead to fatal meningitis or flu becomes fatal pneumonia.
PTSD or any mental illness can be just as lethal as any of the above through no fault of the victim.
Corruption of the language is a modern cultural disease. By classifying alcoholism as a disease, the professional “help” community that has grown a thousand fold in the past 50-75 years and needs work, said to the alcoholic, “you poor baby, you’ve caught a disease, it’s not your fault, not your responsibility, not your free will, LET US HELP YOU FOR A FEE!”
Some mental health issues with physical causes are in reality diseases but simply classifying poor self control as a disease is an excuse. Maybe those that do that have excuseism disease./p>
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