Characteristics Of The Disease

Symptoms

Physical Allergy- Hypersensitivity to alcohol, phenomenon of craving: Once I start I can’t stop; can’t control predictably. I react differently than normal people. I develop an intense, overpowering craving that normal people don’t get. This is due to a physiological difference in me.“Power of the Effect”, Using/drinking changes how I feel, gives me a sense of ease and comfort, courage, excitement.

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 temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all… Chronic

Mental Obsession- These substances give me a super-natural experience so powerful that I develop a mental obsession.

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... Progressive

Mental Blank Spot: My perception of reality is altered before I take the first drink (or hit) so that we can’t see the consequences or can’t bring them to mind with sufficient force to stop from doing what I know will hurt me; loss of power, choice, control.

We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.
The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us... Fatal

Conditions

Chronic - In medicine, a chronic disease is a disease that is long-lasting or recurrent. The term chronic describes the course of the disease, or its rate of onset and development. A chronic course is distinguished from a recurrent course; recurrent diseases relapse repeatedly, with periods of remission in between. As an adjective, chronic can refer to a persistent and lasting medical condition. Many chronic diseases require chronic care management for effective long-term treatment.

"We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing a making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet."

Progressive - A progressive illness is an illness that gradually progresses and changes mode, generally to the worse. In contrast, non-progressive illnesses are relatively constant.

"We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals usually brief were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better."

Fatal - bringing death.

"The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death."

"Though a robust man at retirement, he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years."


Spectrum of Alcoholics

Stages - Social drinker/Experimenter, Moderate drinker/Partier, Heavy Drinker/Hell Raiser, Alcoholic/Addict

Types - Dysfunctional Alcoholic, Functional Alcoholic, Long Term Alcoholic, Short Term Alcoholic, Acute Alcoholic, Chronic Alcoholic, Potential Alcoholic, Periodic Alcoholic

Physiopathologies - Genetic Alcoholic, Exposure Alcoholic, Straight Acoholic, Dual Addicted.