To wonder if addiction is a choice

[BarbaraAnnee]

I am sorry if this sounds insensitive to some people but I just wondered what people thought of this. A relative of mine is an alcoholic and due to her being unfit, her parents have had to permanently look after her DD. I feel so bad for her and just wondered if she really loved her DD she would just stop drinking?

I drink too much. About 4 pints, 4 or 5 times a week. Am I an alcoholic? Probably by some definitions. Am I what most people think of when they hear alcoholic? No.

I make a lot of choices. Every morning I have a slight hangover I choose not to drink on school nights any more. Every Birthday, new years, start of a month I think, I'm going to be sober from now on.

And then almost every night I choose to go up the shop and buy a few cans.

They're not choices, they're the illusion of choice. Sometimes I manage a month off, once I managed a whole year. But mostly I don't.

So no, addiction isn't a choice, it's a million little choices, and a recovering addict has to make the right one every single time.

It's a choice. You choose to put alcohol into your body, over and over, and you choose not to stop.

Says my husband, who had an alcoholic father and an alcoholic former partner (who drank herself to death).

No. It’s not a choice but I totally understand why people think it is.
After all, nobody forces the drink down your throat.
Im nearly ten years sober. I always had a problem since my teens but couldn’t see it.
My son was born when I was 21 and I loved him ferociously. If anyone had told me I’d one day put alcohol before him, I’d never have believed it.
Alcoholics don’t mean to do it. Or maybe I should just explain from my point of view.
I never once woke up and thought “I know what, I’ll get so drunk that I’ll ruin my family’s day.” I’d wake up and feel like such a shit person (childhood stuff that I guess lots of us have but we all have different coping mechanisms) and I had severe health anxiety about myself and my son.
My head would tell me that just one little swig of vodka would make me feel normal. Make me a better mother.
But one swig was never enough and I’d think a second swig won’t get me drunk and so on.
Until I was a shit faced wreck.
Yes, I behaved selfishly. I did anything to get hold of alcohol.
But I don’t believe I’m inherently selfish. In fact, I often drank because I couldn’t bear to see my dad suffer when he was unwell or that kind of thing.
It is a disease but it’s my responsibility to recover from it. Just like a diabetic person is responsible for their diet and insulin intake.
Alcoholics have to get really honest and dig deep and completely change the way we think and react to life.
Everyone has bad stuff happen. Some people reach for a cake. I reached for a bottle because it made me feel like I was wrapped in cotton wool and it made me feel shut off from myself. I hated myself from being a young child and I thought alcohol made me a better person.
Thats the insanity of it.
I hope your relative can get honest and get well and the rest of your family can get support too.

That is really interesting. Its bizarre how it can actually make you feel that it is actually better for you to carry on drinking. I am quite a nice drunk but I know I shouldn't need it to feel happy and I know it is wrong to let my kids witness me constantly drinking. Its as if all your rational thoughts go out of the window when you're addicted to a substance.

An interesting question, I don’t think it’s a choice but not sure I believe it’s an illness either, I think calling it an illness is somehow minimising personal responsibility and their ability to change their circumstances. I think it’s multi factorial and a very complex problem. It’s like saying why don’t over weight people just eat less but of course if it was that easy we would all be supermodels and we wouldn’t have an obesity crisis.

I am so sorry 💐

I know first hand how awful this all is, having witnessed it with my BIL and you are absolutely right, it is not something you would wish on your worst enemy.

The poster who mentioned that addiction gets little sympathy because of the behaviours that the addiction causes is right. Addiction destroys lives and families and relationships like no other illness can.

It's a choice until it's not a choice and I'd imagine it's often hard to know (or be honest about) which side you're actually on. With alcoholism you can convince yourself it's still a choice way beyond the point where it actually is.

Drugs and alcohol also affect the part of the brain that promotes good decision making - frontal cortex I think. So you can be making really, really poor choices that might even lead to you losing your children and not see them for what they are. Addiction is pretty frightening all round.

As a daughter of an alcoholic. I disagree with those saying it’s an Illness.
I truly believe it’s a choice. My mother was able to control it when it suited her so I truly believe she made a choice. My mother would be bladdered for 3 days solid, always on the shifts of my fathers she disliked the most. She would spend the 4th day in bed sobering up and would be fine for the other 3 days.

I also believe that drug addiction and smoking is a choice. Everyone makes that decision to take the drugs and put the cigarette in their mouths for the first time knowing how addictive it is.

I realise it’s an unpopular opinion but I’m sorry, I don’t agree it’s an illness.

This has been a really interesting read.
Im wondering what role, if any, very low self esteem plays in all of this. Negative self talk and feeling like you’re somehow unworthy seems to be at the root of most issues

It's not an opinion to say it's not an illness. It is an illness.. a selfish destructive one yes.
People assume an alcoholic drinks all day every day.. not all do.. I would drink until I was in so much pain I'd promise to stop and never drink again. I'd usually last a day and be back drinking.

I understand where you are coming from. My Dad was an alcoholic. I thought he was choosing drink over his children. I'm now an alcoholic myself I've been sober for awhile thanks to AA

Poor choices can lead to addiction yes. But addiction is NOT a choice.

It’s a choice. Of course the physical addiction gets going but the mind can take steps to seek treatment to stop.

This, over and over again.

Addiction is not a disease, and that’s a hill I’ll forever die on.

You always have a choice, whether it’s using substances in the first place, or continuing to use them. You also always have a choice to stop using and engage in rehabilitation.
Nobody said it was easy though, and it takes commitment and willpower to battle through dependency and the physical, emotional and psychological reliance….but if you continue to not use, you will heal and recover.

Try telling that to a cancer patient or someone living with HIV/AIDS. An actual disease, that no amount of willpower of self restraint will ever help. It’s insulting, and enabling to chalk the two up as the same.

My EXH was an alcoholic (vomiting and shaking and in pain if he didn’t have a beer as soon as he woke up), and his mother (my MIL) was a crack addict. They both quit cold turkey and have been clean for around 12 and 7 years respectively.

BIL selfmedicated with alcohol and SIL with food. Both of them tried to lift their depression (nasty parental divorce, DV) with something that would try to numb their feelings of inadequacy and failure, despite having good jobs and loving partners. Both replicated the sadness of their parents divisive marriage. It was a viscious circle and sadly neither would accept help of any kind, have become reclusive and their actions drove friends and other family away. It seems such a waste.

If it's serious addiction, like an alcoholic, it's an illness.

But for less extreme cases it can be a choice. A selfishness, a lack of awareness, a lack of care of whether you hurt others, of how your actions affect others. because if it was mild addiction, you choose to go and get Counselling, help. if you choose not to, be socially unaware, if you choose not to care whether you're hurting anybody when you have yet another drink then that really is a choice.

'Try telling that to a cancer patient or someone living with HIV/AIDS. An actual disease, that no amount of willpower of self restraint will ever help. It’s insulting, and enabling to chalk the two up as the same.'

Exactly.

"Plenty of people take codeine all day every day. My dad included, he is not a junkie"

An opiate is an opiate. Whether it's heroin, codeine, fentanyl, OxyContin, tramadol, methadone, they all come from the opium poppy.

Why do we stigmatise the 'junkies' a la trainspotting but think middle class OTC/prescription pill poppers are morally any superior?

He is an addict.

It's unlikely this has had no effect on your DSIS's current addiction issues.

Absolutely agree. I lost my former partner to a brain tumour. He had no choice. He put himself through degrading treatments to just buy himself extra months with our kids.

Very different to my stepdaughter's so-called mother who was told she needed to stop drinking in order to see her daughter grow up. She did not stop. She actually laughed at my husband when he said he would pour her alcohol away. She laughed and said she would just buy more.

It makes me so angry when people try to excuse her choices as an 'illness'.

My former partner was ill. She was just a selfish bitch who chose alcohol over her partner and child.

His children weren’t enough to stop either (not even at the very beginning). Lying in a hospital bed being told if he didn’t stop he’d die finally made him wake up to it.

In my experience addiction is a combination of depression, anxiety & obsessional tendencies. I don't think anyone sets out to be addicted it's a terrible curse & there's a huge lack of empathy even in supportive services for this issue.

I do think it’s a choice, but an extremely complex one.

Daughter of a now recovering alcoholic here. I never felt like it my my DM’s choice to be an alcoholic. I always saw it as an illness. On reflection though, my perception may be rooted in that if I decided it was a choice I may have blamed her for it, it has always been easier to deal with my own resentment knowing it as an illness.
That being said… I see her becoming sober as absolutely being a choice to put a line in the sand and say “no more” and one that I really admire her for. She was able to make that choice though because she had a supportive family, was comfortable financially and was offered a huge amount of support. She was incredibly privileged in a way that many others that suffer from addiction aren’t and so her recovery is still a success, so far, over a decade down the line.
Overall, I think it’s really nuanced, addiction is a rough card that people are dealt, often from previous trauma, lucky ones are able to pull themselves out of it but I don’t see it as a weakness of character for those that are sadly not able to.

This is such an interesting thread.

I quit smoking weed last year, after smoking pretty much daily for 30 years. I was what people (including me) would call a "functioning" addict - I've always worked, for example. It always felt to me that being a bit stoned all the time was my default setting. I didn't feel like myself otherwise.

I don't even really know what the trigger was for me to stop. I just decided enough was enough. It was hard for a few weeks, and I would find it really difficult to refuse if someone offered it to me, probably forever. But I actively chose to not buy it anymore, and I don't really socialise with anyone else that smokes, so in that respect, it's easier for me to not be tempted.

I'm 53 now, and when I look back at my childhood, there was probably a fair bit of undiagnosed trauma, my parents have both been married three times each, and that would have had an effect on me without me realising, I expect.

I'm glad I stopped. I miss it, though, really miss it. I've found other things to replace the obsession, wellness and exercise, that sort of thing, and I do actually feel more 'me' without it, although I never thought I would. But the temptation will always be there, it's like a part of me that's missing. I just made the choice not to have it anymore.

I agree. I feel I've chosen how I am and who I am and I don't know how to get out of the spell that to me is so safe and familiar. Stuck completely. Lots of issues. I feel I can't do anything from fear of judgement 😥😥

Because they have seen or experienced the damage left in their wake.

Even worse, they may have experienced their childhood being toiletted for the sake of the illness, only for their parent to be sober once there was no actual parenting to do; topped off with the expectation that they should celebrate and never mention it, and conspire with everyone else that their ruined childhood was a tiny price to pay, which they were happy to give. FFS.