Is Alcoholism a Sin or a Disease????

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Steve,

I heartily agree. But I’ve also just seen too many tragic cases where an AA oldtimer fancied himself so “recovered” that he assumed that one drink couldn’t possibly undo so many years of spiritual progess. One fellow who did that after about a dozen years of sobriety had friends bring him to meetings every day until he finally died eight years later, but in the meantime he was never again able to stop drinking.

That’s why I’ll say again that while moral convictions certainly do help us stay sober, the disorder itself is still in the realm of mind-body neurology, and there is as yet no standard lecture or entreaty that will instill in an alcoholic a desire to stop drinking. As Bill W. wrote elsewhere, quite typically our most persuasive advocate is John Barleycorn himself.
 
Greetings,

One of the greatest obstacles to learning, is believing you already have all the answers. We don’t.

I have known Cherubino for a number of years, and have read much of what he has learned about alcholism. He certainly is way out ahead of most of us.

The thing we need to realize is that we are much more complex than just the physical and mental. We are spiritual creatures as well. Few things affect the physical without affecting all other parts of our being. We like to put things in compartments but it just does not work.

I am recovering from lung cancer. This is undeniably a disease Is it just physical? I can tell you from talking to some real experts in the field that it is not. It affects a person in every way and believe me, not only the physical part can kill but so can the attitude and spiritual. Talk to a cancer doctor and you will hear this loud and clear.

AA, attacks the disease, disorder, addiction, sin, call it what you may, from every area. It works. Cherub is a testimony that this works.

I think if AA looked at alcoholism from just the physical, or just the emotional, or just the spiritual it would be a dismal failure. It is not a failure but have been salvation for many.

In my opinion, just one more way that God provides for his kids.
 
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puzzleannie:
the predisposition to react badly physically and emotionally to ingesting alcohol is a disease, a disorder, with multiple interacting causes, like diabetes, bipolar disorder, homosexuality, and whether one is born with or aquires a disorder, it is not a sin. But like all disorders it includes the tendency and attraction to sin. Diabetics often crave sugar, one of the symptoms of the disease, and ingesting it at the wrong time can worsen the disease and have many ill effects. Actions taken under influence of a disorder can be sinful, but the guilt and moral responsibility for these actions may be mitigated if free will is impeded. The alcoholic has a choice whether to take that drink, and feeding the addiction is definitely a sin, with all the usual conditions attached to the definition of sin. deliberately impeding the action of free will and responsible choice is in iteself a sin.
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What’s the attraction to sin with rheumatoid arthritis or a brain tumor?
 
Among my own acquaintances, those who are strongly convinced that alcoholism is a sin are likely those who’ve been adversely affected by an alcoholic in their own family. I think this is easy to understand, and Bill W. once addressed the question as follows:

"The approach to the alcoholic is everything. I think the preacher could do well if he does as we do. First find out all you can about the case, how the man reacts, whether he wants to get over his drinking or not. You see, it is very difficult to make an impression on a man who still wants to drink. At some point in their drinking career most alcoholics get punished enough so that they want to stop, but then it’s far too late to do it alone.

"Sometimes, if the alcoholic can be impressed with the fact that he is a sick man, or a potentially sick man, then, in effect, you raise the bottom up to him instead of allowing him to drop down those extra hard years to reach it. I don’t know of any substitute for sympathy and understanding, as much as the outsider can have. No preaching, no moralizing, but the emphasis on the idea that the alcoholic is a sick man.

"In other words, the minister might first say to the alcoholic, ‘Well, all my life I’ve misunderstood you people, I’ve taken you people to be immoral by choice and perverse and weak, but now I realize that even if there had been such factors, they really no longer count, now you’re a sick man.’ You might win over the patient by not placing yourself up on a hilltop and looking down on him, but by getting down to some level of understanding that he gets, or partially gets. Then if you can present this thing as a fatal and progressive malady and you can present our group as a group of people who are not seeking to do anything against his will - we merely want to help if he wants to be helped - then sometimes you’ve laid the groundwork.

“I think that clergymen can often do a great deal with the family. You see, we alcoholics are prone to talk too much about ourselves without sufficiently considering the collateral effects. For example, any family, wife and children, who have had to live with an alcoholic 10 or 15 years, are bound to be rather neurotic and distorted themselves. They just can’t help it. After all when you expect the old gent to come home on a shutter every night, it’s wearing. Children get a distorted point of view; so does the wife. Well, if they constantly hear it emphasized that this fellow is a terrible sinner, that he’s a rotter, that he’s in disgrace, and all that sort of thing, you’re not improving the condition of the family at all because, as they become persuaded of it, they get highly intolerant of the alcoholic and that merely generates more intolerance in him. Therefore, the gulf which must be bridged is widened, and that is why moralizing pushes people, who might have something to offer, further away from the alcoholic. You may say that it shouldn’t be so, but it’s one of those things that is so.”

(From a talk given at the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies, June 1945).
 
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Cherubino:
TCB,

After attending more than 5,000 AA meetings and talking one-on one-with dozens of newcomers for over 15 years, I can only tell you how much I could wish that were true. But our collective experience has been that the vast majority of us alkies are, in our own minds, either too smart, too moral or both to admit that we’re powerless over the the crazy idea that no matter what has happened to us in the past, we can safely handle just one or two drinks. If such a person is a true alcoholic, his moral ideals and confidence in his will power actually turn out to be his own worst enemies!

That is the absolutely baffling feature of alcoholism as we see it in the trenches of real life every day. The alcoholic who doesn’t “get the program” and fails to achieve lasting sobriety isn’t generally the one who is too dumb to understand it or too depraved to want it. Paradoxically, people like that are actually among our most promising prospects. But the fellow who fancies that his current religious beliefs and moral convictions will suffice once he has learned a few facts about alcoholism has a much poorer prognosis. That’s the reality we deal with, one day at a time.🙂
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Cherubino,
I agree with everything that you have said. However, I think that you may misunderstand me. You seem to disagree with my statement that sobriety is obtained through the will guided by intellect with grace. I think that we may actually agree but I do need to clarify some terms.

First, we need to understand what I mean by will. Will is not “will power.” Will is the ability of human beings to respond to the good either sensory or intellectual. Sobriety is not a matter of determination, stubbornness or toughness (in other words will power). I believe that sobriety (and any other virtue) depends on humility and meekness. Your comments really illustrate the chief barrier to sobriety, pride (…either too smart, too moral or both to admit that we’re powerless…).

Second, when I say guided by the intellect, I am talking about role of man’s spiritual nature. Alcoholics and addicts don’t stop abusing drugs because the craving just went away or some gene just made alcohol suddenly taste awful. It seems that people who stop drinking are led by a truth they had avoided. Sobriety does began with a decision based on reason, not sensation. If sobriety begins with a decision then the will is involved.

Finally, intelligence (high IQ) has little to do with the ability to see a hurtful truth (powerlessness over alcohol). I find that many older alcoholics are very bright, too “smart” to stop drinking.
 
TCB,

Are you speaking from personal experience here or is your thesis a deduction from moral principle? I have personally seen literally hundreds of people come into AA with what I can only describe as the most altruistic intentions possible, only thence to see them fall by the waysde after a few weeks, months or years. Nor does there seem to be any correlation between their chances of success and their prior religious convictions or lack of same. At least as often or not, the gent (or lady) who stumbles through the door a hardened atheist or an ambivalent agnostic turns out to be our most promising customer.

The actuaries who keep track of the numbers at insurance companies and the statisticians at various government agencies and private rehabs estimate that of all those who seek help of any sort with a drinking problem, approximately one out of every thirty-six will achieve lifelong sobriety, and my gut hunch is that those percentages are overly optimistic. And keep in mind too that the data base is largely polluted (all puns intended!) with chronic liars.

This is the reality I see in front of me every day, and if you doubt what I’m saying, I invite you to spend some time in the trenches and see it all for yourself.
 
The problem seems to be the question. Alcoholism seems to involve both sin and disease. There seems to be little gained from splitting hairs about it. (What’s your point? Perhaps that because it has aspects of disease that people have no responsibility for it? No sympathy for that here. Please! tell me if I’m wrong.)

I had a psychological personality test and the psychologist said that I had a stong tendency to become an alcoholic.

so, I guess he was saying my personality set me up for it. Joke is on him because I basically hate drinking. I get a headache after one drink of anything and so drinking alcohol is very aversive for me. I do like one drink of some things, like Zinfandel, once every two or three months.

Other people react differently and some have already spoken about that above.
 

It’s probable, that alchoholism is a disease.
I want to bring obesity to the table. With all these gastric bypasses I wonder if wanting to kill one’s self with food is a type of mental disorder. I wonde if booze can become the same dang thing.​

 
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jeffreedy789:
I would say that alcoholism is a disease, caused by sin, and willfully submitting to the disease is a sin.
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as with all addictions, the culpability factor diminishes as the addiction becomes stronger. but the person has guilt for becoming addicted, and for willfully submitting to it.

I agree wholeheartedly, except for the decline in culpability factor, for the choice to change is always there, and we are always to blame. I have fought Morbid Obesity all my life, and I realized that food was my God, and I have finally found a way to beat it… (for more info on that click here)

I am currently at war with my addiction and God is now Leading the fight and my Focus stays on him, but through my choice, and my choice only, I could slide back into that addiction.

“We all make the bed we lie in” — my dad.
 
For those who are really interested, the book linked at the bottom of this post presents some compelling evidence that alcoholism is a measurable condition that has identifiable physiological “markers,” which is exactly what William Sikworth, MD hypothesized in his contribution to the original AA “Big Book” in 1935, but could not prove at the time. Silkworth wrote then:

"We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temporate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve…

"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks – drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery…

"I do not hold with those who believe that alcoholism is entirely a problem of mental control. I have had many men who had, for example, worked a period of months on some problem or business deal which was to be settled on a certain date, favorably to them. They took a drink a day or so prior to the date, and then the phenomenon of craving at once became paramount to all other interests so that the important appointment was not met. These men were not drinking to escape; they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control…

“On the other hand – and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand – once a psychic change has occured, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.”

“Alcoholcs Anonymous” pp. xxii - xxiii.

Kenneth Blum is equally controversial, but to my knowledge no one has yet rerun his laboratory experiments and come up with contradictory results.
amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0029037018/qid=1097889388/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-1817557-7565627?v=glance&s=books
 
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Cherubino:
TCB,

Are you speaking from personal experience here or is your thesis a deduction from moral principle?
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Admitting that your are powerless over alcohol is a humbling and yes humiliating statement, especially in our culture. I would think that this is obvious. People these days don’t even believe that they are powerless over cancer.
I have personally seen literally hundreds of people come into AA with what I can only describe as the most altruistic intentions possible, only thence to see them fall by the waysde after a few weeks, months or years.
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No disagreement here. However, how many people have you seen come to AA with-out any reason (altruistic or otherwise)? How many people come to AA and say, “I want to stop drinking because I hate the taste of alcohol” or “I want to stop drinking because I don’t enjoy alcohol?” Medical attempts to “cure” alcoholism by destroying the desire have been a failure.

Selfish reasons work also and are the best reason. How many people get sober because everyone has a problem with my drinking except me? How long do they last?
Nor does there seem to be any correlation between their chances of success and their prior religious convictions or lack of same. At least as often or not, the gent (or lady) who stumbles through the door a hardened atheist or an ambivalent agnostic turns out to be our most promising customer.
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Religious affection is no guarantee. I’ve seen atheist maintain sobriety. This one colleague used a system that he called Rational Recovery, AA without the God talk. Atheist may benefit from the grace of God whether they know it or not.
 
The actuaries who keep track of the numbers at insurance companies and the statisticians at various government agencies and private rehabs estimate that of all those who seek help of any sort with a drinking problem, approximately one out of every thirty-six will achieve lifelong sobriety, and my gut hunch is that those percentages are overly optimistic. And keep in mind too that the data base is largely polluted (all puns intended!) with chronic liars.

Interesting. I would like to see age cohorts. Would the results be different at 20 years of age versus age 50. The question is whether or not people ever achieve lifetime sobriety?
This is the reality I see in front of me every day, and if you doubt what I’m saying, I invite you to spend some time in the trenches and see it all for yourself.
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Been there. Currently, I’m in geriatrics and work with many recovering alcoholics and occasional none recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.
 
Last post for the night:

Is anyone willing to provide a definition of disease that would include behavioral problems.
 
The bible does not make distiction between sickness and sin and curse, so it does not make any distiction between wellness, blessing, health, riches, pardon, etc : All good comes from God, all bad comes from sin.

We are not to get confused about whether something happens to us is caused by sin or not. The most important thing is that God can free us from any oppression of any kinds of bad things, because God has never will bad things to happen to us. And if we can recognize something as bad, then turn away from it.

We can go to doctor to get medications, but God is always the healer. This we ought to believe . Doctor and medicine are only God’s tool to heal people. And sometimes He does not use any tools to heal someone who trust Him in His Name (“in Jesus Name”).

Sometimes we become so fearful/ worry so much so that we got addictive to something (drinks, drugs, medications). But we ought to believe that God is the source of our strength : both body and spirit. Our physical body and mind is so sophisticated that it can be so strong that both physician & psychologist would not be able to understand. Moreover, when we believe God, His strength is unbelievable. No one can reason when He does His Mighty works for us.

Doctor can prescribe medication, but healing ALWAYS comes from God alone. So ask Him and thank Him.

Sirach 38
1 Give due honor to the doctor, for you need him and God Himself establish him.
2 Healing, in fact, comes from the Most High; the gift of healing comes from the Sovereign.
…
9 My son, when you are sick do not be anxious; pray to the Lord to heal you.
10 Give up bad habits, keep your hands clean, and purify your heart from all sin
…
12 Consult the doctor…
13 There are cases when good health depends on doctors.
14 They too, will pray to the Most High to grant them success in healing in order to save life
15. May he who sins before his Maker, fall into the hands of the doctor ! [But may those who believe fall into the hands of the Most High Who would grant them “the gift” of healing ! - francisca]

God bless.
 

Is anyone willing to provide a definition of disease that would include behavioral problems.​

Mental Illness is a disease.
 
Lily,

Autism comes to mind. So do Shakespeare’s Othello, whose epilepsy was very much the root of the insecurities that left him tormented by jealousy and susceptible to Iago’s scheming, as does Lear with his Alzheimer’s delusions of grandeur. That, I believe, is why the Bard’s deranged characters are so enduring and simultaneously unnerving and endearing. We see ourselves in their struggles with their demons without the social and linguistic buffer of a moral labeling system or a psychiatric diagnosis. They are us and we are them.
 
The disease theory was promoted by and continues to be fed by the recovery industry. There’s a lot of money to be made in running treatment centers, and as long as addiction is classified a disease, insurance will pay for treatment.

AA and other 12-Step programs work for people who, by the grace of God, have received a wake-up call and are taking it seriously. Ironically, medical treatment and therapy seldom work and only serve to delay the wake-up call (it’s called “enabling”).

Most alcoholics and addicts, as well as their family members, cling to the disease theory because it excuses reprehensible behavior and limits culpability. Most wives and girlfriends don’t want to leave their losers, and calling addiction a disease gives them an excuse to stay. Instead of feeling like losers themselves, they feel loving and forgiving – meanwhile, they are losing everything and risking the well-being (and sometimes the lives) of themselves and their children. And they are also interfering with the wake-up call.

Those who claim alcoholism is a disease believe it fully and will not be moved from their position – and they can point to studies and data – so it’s kind of like arguing about religion or politics.

Do they think cigarette smoking is a disease – or eating? Probably not, but alcoholics and addicts tend to think of themselves as very different and special – much deeper and more complicated than ordinary people. And I do speak from experience.

Tricia Frances
 
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Lilyofthevalley:

Is anyone willing to provide a definition of disease that would include behavioral problems.​

Mental Illness is a disease.
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Lily et al,
What is mental illness?

This questions might seem silly but civil libertarians, psychiatrist and lately insurers struggle over this concept.

The Soviet Union use to put political dissidents into mental institutions. Communist China still does. The defense that Chinese officials give isn’t necessarily unreasonable. The officials simply state that someone who would publicly protest in China must be crazy.

Is Western man any better?

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association voted that homosexuality should no longer be considered an illness. Everyone ackowledges that this was a political decision. There were no new scientific facts at that time.

In the last decade the APA declared that perverse sexual behaviors (paraphilias, including pedophilia) were no longer an illness unless the participant suffered bad consequences or was disturbed by their behavior. Faced with a political backlash in Congress (while trying to get mental health parity), the APA quickly changed back to the previous the diagnostic criteria.

When is the last time someone voted on whether or not lung cancer or epilepsy was a disease?
 

What is with calling an addict a looser? Where’s the compassion? ================================================
When is the last time someone voted on whether or not lung cancer or epilepsy was a disease?​

Perhaps UNDERSTANDING of a problem helps develop it into a treatable disease. For example, long ago, epilepsy was seen as someone having a demon in them. Now we know it’s caused by the brain.
 
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