I see your point Loner. Though in my case, I don't have any doubt that I had/have an addictive personality and that it's a life long managment thing. I guess that's why I buck a bit about PTSD being life long management as well. It's a lot of managing, a lot of effort at times. Post sobriety though, I was still having difficulties a lot of alcoholics just didn't have. If it's a neurology issue... and my PTSD began with childhood trauma somehow that makes me feel a bit better about the co-occuring behavior thing.
A while back my internal medicine doctor also added ADHD and COSA - Co-occuring Stimulating Activity of undefined origin apparently. I knew about the ADD... and thought I was managing it fairly well - independently sought treatment and didn't share that with him. Apparently not. Anyhow, if it's neuro... it makes me feel a bit less uncomfortable about it because I really have been working at this for a long time... a bit more than 12 years now.
Kind of a funny odd thought. It just occurred to me that AA was right according to this particular article - the disease model I mean. I had sort of bought into the disease model because of my food allergies, and I actually am allergic to alot of the components of booze... but it is kind of a bummer that it's considered chronic. That's why I switched to the behavior model and REBT and CBT for substance abuse. It had a more optimistic outlook. Either way... both recovery models have value, it may be interesting to follow this topic for a while and see what develops.
Crap. Guess that article also resolves the other substance addiction controversy: Recovering v.s. I Have Recovered. Though I am sure that there are those that can have many sober years and surely there must be some exceptions to the rule?
There is something quite frustrating about overhearing many well-intentioned comments to alcohol addicted people that can only lead one to conclude, when they're unable to stay stopped, that they are weak when really just one of the problems to be known and dealt with is that the brain is actually then damaged.
Well that may be. But the sad fact is that continued addiction leads to wet brain, DT's, cyrrosis, chronic malnutrition, chronic dehydration, and more serious mental disorders. Eventually the brain will do anything it can to get you to give it the drug of choice and that means death, jail or mental institutions unless it can be arrested. When I was little my mother worked in as a "Pink Lady" (volunteer) in a detox unit in San Diego in the early 70's. Scared the heck out of me. Affected me so much, I didn't have much of a problem getting my but into a program of recovery after realized I was literally killing myself and was really sick. Recovery models work with a solid commitment but it is not easy and like the article says it takes maintenance for life. Nobody likes to hear that no matter how you slice it.
Things that make you go "hmmmm" which came first, the PTSD or the addiction brain damage. I'm betting it was PTSD. But can't prove it.
