Welcome to the Club: Wahler in Rehab

16. #15 Gordonr, You're absolutely right in that everyone's entitled to have their our own opinions. I understand what you're saying about alcoholism being listed as a disease by the AMA; however, I disagree with that. Having gone to medical school, I can tell you that, in my experience, the AMA can be out of step with real life; many times, they make decisions that are POLITICALLY based, which is what I believe they've done here. This is the same organization that once listed homosexuality as a disease; they also originally didn't believe schizophrenia had a physiological cause but was due to "emotional" causes. So, you'll have to pardon me if I don't fall in step with everything they say.

The biggest problem I've seen with these young hollywood types is they don't make smart decisions regarding their behavior; instead, they fall in with the crowd that drinks & does drugs; they see others do it and decide to do it themselves. Later, when they drive drunk or hurt themselves or others when looped, they fall back on the current excuse of "I've got a disease", which is another way of saying "it's not my fault, this just happened". Wrong. Alcoholism & drug habits are addictions caused by conscious choices to begin ingesting those substances; no one makes you drink or do drugs but yourself. The AMA's wrong on this one, and are helping facilitate an entire generation of alcoholics & drug addicts from having to accept responsibility for their decisions. If they never accept responsibility, there is no accountability and we're one step closer to that slippery slope where we don't hold addicts as accountable as sober people for their actions. Thanks to the "I've got a disease" cop out & the AMA's facilitation of no accountability, that's the direction we're headed.

Posted at 3:10AM on May 11th 2007 by I disagree