Re: Re: My experience with caffeine - alcohol addiction

[Guest guest]

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:53:05 -0000

" alangaud " <alangaud@...> wrote:

> I need a good reference for that. I've always read that

> ANYONE can become physically addicted to alcohol. How quickly and

> 'easily' that'll happen can vary tremendously from person to person.

Suggest you read:

Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease

http://snipurl.com/fv9w

A review:

After reading Fingarette's essay " Alcoholism and Self-Deception " in

_Self-Deception and Self-Understanding_, I was eager for more of his

unique and interesting perspective on problem drinking. In this short

and very readable book, Fingarette steadily and easily demolishes the

prevailing opinion that alcoholism is a disease in which the alcoholic

loses control over his drinking. (The scientific community long ago

abandoned this view, but it lives on as dogma through the recovery

movement.)

Fingarette instead explains problem drinking as the result of choices

that elevate drinking into a " central activity " in the drinker's life.

He argues that the motivations for the choices that make drinking a core

value are as many and varied as are the individuals making them. My only

serious objection to the book comes in the final chapter on social

policy; Fingarette would seem to be happy to turn this country into a

totalitarian state to prevent some people from making stupid choices

about alcohol. Despite that flaw, _Heavy Drinking_ presents an

impressive and well-reasoned case against the disease model of problem

drinking.

http://www.dianahsieh.com/reviews/hd.html

A few months back Lynn Siprelle and I had a brief exchange about the

subject:

On Mon, 1 Nov 2004 14:40:45 -0800

Lynn Siprelle <lynn@...> wrote:

> > the author notes that what we would today define as " heavy drinking "

> > was

> > quite common among the colonials, even among the so called Puritans,

> > and

> > yet none were what we would call today an " alcoholic. "

>

> Perhaps the difference was that these old-time daily drinks were all

> natural ferments instead of cultivated yeast ferments?

That I don't know. But I do know that people having been getting

intoxicated since time immemorial, so whatever they drank it was up to

the task.

I have no doubt

> in my mind that alcoholism exists; I've seen too many people's lives

> ruined, nearly including my own and my husband's.

I've known several people whose lives have been ruined when alcohol

became its central core. The author disputes such behavior though as

being a disease, not that people engage in it.

At any rate, this question won't be resolved on this list of any other

list any time soon. Particularly given the extremely controversial

nature of the book as noted in the brief blurb below:

" Heavy Drinking informs the general public for the first time how recent

research has discredited almost every widely held belief about alcoholism,

including the very concept of alcoholism as a single disease with a

unique cause. Herbert Fingarette presents constructive approaches to

heavy drinking, including new methods of helping heavy drinkers and

social policies for preventing heavy drinking and the harms associated

with it. "

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" So this is how freedom dies -- to thunderous applause. "

(Senator Padme Amidala in " Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith " )

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