The Disease Concept of Alcoholism

The American Medical Association defines alcoholism as an illness or disease. Dr. David Ohlm, an expert in the field of alcoholism, has defined alcoholism as follows:

Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive, incurable disease characterized by loss of control over alcohol and other sedatives.

• Chronic: Lasts a long time.
• Progressive: Alcoholism goes through a series of increasing symptoms and it does not go away. It gets worse even after long periods of sobriety, and can be reactivated by a single drink.
• Incurable: One can not return to normal drinking. One can return to a normal life, but only by stopping drinking.
• Disease: A condition in which bodily health is impaired and interferes with the ability of the person to function normally.
• Loss of control: Once the alcoholic takes that first drink after a period of being sober or abstinent, he/she can not predict with any reliability whether he/she is going to have a normal or abnormal drinking episode. Therefore, they do not control the alcohol, it controls them.

This is the major factor in defining alcoholism--can one predict their behavior every time we drink?