Are Alcoholism And Addiction Really Incurable Diseases?

My son Pax began using marijuana when he was fifteen. When he was eighteen, he came home from school one day and began crying. He told me he was hooked on heroin. For the next six years, I battled heroin for Pax’s life. He went to thirty-day programs, sixty-day programs, and ninety-day programs. Nothing worked. We went to drug therapists, alcohol therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, addiction specialists, and counselors of every sort. They would tell us that alcoholism and addiction were diseases and that they were incurable.

At first, we relied on their judgment because they were the experts. As a result, Pax and I suffered great hopelessness and despair. As the years passed and I gained more insight, information, and experience with Pax and others who were addicted, I came to understand that alcoholism and addiction were not diseases at all but responses to underlying conditions.

Then, every time I heard someone hand out the same “disease” line, I wanted to shake them and ask them to wake up and think.

Today, having healed hundreds of people just like Pax, I can write with complete certainty that alcoholism and addiction are not diseases. Rather, they are names used to describe the states in which we find ourselves after we’ve used alcohol or addictive drugs for a long enough period of time to have developed a dependency on them, meaning that we can’t permanently discontinue their use without help.

In short, alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems.

Those problems always have both physical and psychological components—anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficit disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain.

When the underlying problems are discovered and cured, the need for alcohol or drugs disappears. Alcohol is just a quick and easy way to change ordinary, everyday reality from unbearable to bearable. All it takes is a short trip to the liquor store and a few drinks. People who are dependent are merely using alcohol as a crutch to get through the day. Yet doctors and scientists are still treating “alcoholism” as if it is the problem, when it has nothing at all to do with the problem. They might as well be studying “scratchism” for people who have a chronic itch.

Suppose you had a chronic itch and scratched it regularly throughout the day. Would you have “scratchism”? Would you be a “scratchaholic”? What if you had a constant headache, and to cope with it you took aspirin several times each day. Would you suffer from “aspirinism,” and would you be called an “aspirinaholic”? More important, if you sought help for treatment of those ailments, would you be treated for “scratchism” or “aspirinism”? Of course not; you would be treated for the underlying conditions that led you to scratch or use aspirin—perhaps poison ivy or stress.

A woman from Australia came to us with a severe drinking problem. Her psychiatrist suggested a treatment center. Because she was a prominent figure in Australia, they looked for a center outside the country and found Passages. After some cautious and gentle probing, we were able to uncover the cause of her misery and shame. Her husband had forced her to participate in strange and demeaning sexual practices and that in some of those practices he would beat her. Her self-esteem had been trampled, she had become demoralized and humiliated, and she didn’t know what to do about it. We were also able to help her find the courage to resolve that she would never let her husband abuse her again. We then brought her husband in for counseling and learned that he actually thought she secretly enjoyed his strange sexual practices and physical abuse. When he learned otherwise, he was ashamed of what he had done, and because he truly loved his wife, he promised that he would never harm her or subject her to that strange behavior again. They are both happier than ever before, and neither one uses alcohol.

If I were to create a word that more accurately describes alcoholism and addiction, I would say it was dependencyism.

Dependency can be to alcohol, addictive street drugs, addictive prescription drugs, sex, gambling, food, cutting, or any other behavior that you may have chosen to help you cope with your life, but in nearly every case, what applies to drug and alcohol dependency applies to other dependencies as well.

Looking at addiction like this will open your mind to new ways of thinking that will cause you to see your dependency, and perhaps your entire life, in a whole new light. It will help you understand that all dependency is a symptom, not a problem. Seeing your dependency in that new light will enable you to heal yourself more quickly and more effectively than ever before—and permanently.