Is alcoholism a disease?
In short, the answer is NO. However…
It has always been hard to have consensus on the idea that addiction and/or alcoholism is a disease because it doesn’t follow the model that is established in identifying diseases. Alcohol and other drugs could be seen as the causative agent of a disease, but many use these substances and are not addicted or become alcoholics. The idea that alcoholism is a disease came from the beginnings of Alcoholics Anonymous. It behoved them to characterize addiction to alcohol as a disease since the medical community had been putting alcoholics into mental health centers and using electro-convulsive therapy, or shock treatment, and the alcoholic community wanted to establish that their problem wasn’t a mental problem, but an addiction. In the 1050’s the American Medical Association characterized alcoholism as a disease as well, but recent scholars, like Dr. Bill Miller, a leading researcher in addictions from the University of New Mexico, have established that it alcoholism doesn’t fit the disease model.
Last Updated on Monday, 14 December 2009 19:47
Alcohol is the most spread addiction in canada after cigarettes. The problem is that it is socially acceted!
!0 years ago, an average of 10% of our helpline calls were for medication addiction. Today it is over 40%!