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Post Info TOPIC: History of the disease concept
Tuggboat


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History of the disease concept
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We often think of the idea that Alcoholism is a disease as a modern concept. Personally i didn't buy the idea and thought it was a hoax to get money from the insurance company. My sobriety was pretty uncomfortable at first but there came times when I accepted a little more and then a little more that I actually had a disease instead of a weak chacter or lack of brains or such.

It interested me that it has been referred as a disease for all recorded time. I'm still catching up to find where in history we lost this important concept but I always figured the real knowledge of life had been lost to history. It seems we have merely rediscovered what the ancients without their modern sciences and technologies and miracles of modern medicine already knew.

We have a disease, a sickness that sets us a bit apart from other drinkers.



The Combined Addiction Disease Chronologies of
William White, MA, Ernest Kurtz, PhD, and Caroline Acker, PhD
5th BC - 1863
This first chronology spans the earliest medicalization of excessive drinking through the discovery of addiction in America. This discovery occurs during a period that witnessed a
dramatic increase in American per capita alcohol consumption and drinking preferences (from fermented to distilled alcohol) as well as a recognition of the addictive powers of opium and
morphine. We will also see in this first period the first articulation of a disease concept of alcoholism and the call for the creation of specialized medical institutions for the treatment of the
inebriate. Note the early emergence of elements that will become the core of the addiction disease concept: tolerance, withdrawal, progression, loss of control, inability to abstain, and the necessity of total abstinence.http://63.134.251.187/Pictures/5thBC-1865.pdf---- Early references to drink madness from ancient Egypt and Greece (Crothers,
1893)
5th Century BC Heroditus (fifth century BC) reference to drunkenness as a body and soul sickness (Crothers, 1893)

4th Century BC Aristotle (384-322 BC) in comparing licentiousness to drunkenness noted that the former was a functional disorder while the latter resulted from an organic
disorder. He viewed licentiousness as permanent but drunkenness curable. (The Cyclopaedia of Temperance and Prohibition, p. 221)

1st Century AD Seneca (4 B.C.-65 A.D.) (Seneca. Epistle LXXXIII: On drunkenness. Classics of the Alcohol Literature. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol (1942) 3:302- 307.)

the word drunken is used in two ways,-in the one case of a man who is loaded with wine and has no control over himself; in the other, of a man who is accustomed to get drunk, and is a slave to the habit...there is a great difference between a man who is drunk and a drunkard. p. 304
drunkenness is nothing but a condition of insanity purposely assumed. p. 306
...the vices which liquor generated retain their power even when the liquor is gone. p. 307



This link is to the rest of the paper its only about 5 pages and goes up to 1863




-- Edited by Tuggboat at 14:44, 2008-01-20

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Doll


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Concept? And pretty right on if ya asked me......


In 1956, the American Medical Association (AMA) stated alcoholism was a disease, as it met the five criteria needed in order to be considered a disease: pattern of symptoms, chronicity, progression, subject to relapse, and treatability.

I have high blood pressure that I must take medication for, daily. If I don't it will surely skyrocket and land me in the hospital, or worse. I treat my alcoholism the same and AA is my medication.

Thanks for the post, Bob.  We can never go wrong when we arm ourselves with information.

-- Edited by Doll at 05:56, 2008-01-21

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Tuggboat


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Hey !! You got my name!! Nice to meet you Jennifer. :) Little things like using my name sure makes me feel welcome.

I always liked the old stories about alcohol. this was new to me and it looks like were banging a lot around the first step in the forums I've visited so far.

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