Why would anyone say: Shame on you for suggesting a pill can cure a disease. If alcoholISM IS a disease, then why can't there be a cure? Just as some in the deaf community oppose choclear implants to "cure" deafness and remove people from the "deaf community," so too the "Recovery community" needs to keep people sick and stigmatized as "alcoholics" to keep them in the Recovery Community. Hence stopping drinking isn't enough, moving on in life is heresy, a pill that allows one to stop drinking or stop addictive, dependent or abusive drinking is not a cure? If the problem returns when one stops taking a medication, then it's not helpful? Insulin therapy is not a cure for diabetes, but it sure helps. Isn't it OK to find something that helps, lessens harm, leads to a life outside of "recovering"? I'm please with progress - especially if it "cures" the feeling of need to drink. How would this support harmful drinking? The doctor said he could have a glass without having another, but he didn't express the desire to do so. This shame is like a flame.
Posted by carolr on 12 Jan 09 01:11 PM EST
Being relatively new to the ReHab community (as the mother of a person suffering from the horrors of alcohol addiction), I am shocked that anyone would quible over whether this might be a cure or a treatment (if either). If indeed studies show this drug could improve the terrible recovery statistics coming out of the ReHab structure in this country. Many who have had their lives destroyed by addiction would gladly trade that addiction for other side effects. Some of the comments above reek of the moralism I thought that,through research, we had finally come to realize has nothing to do with addiction. We've come a long ways from the "stiff upper lip" approach to depression; why can we not make faster progress on addiction - does the ReHab community have too much vested interest to be open to research that might help millions of people? Are the people who succeeded at the "hard way" to recovery really going to begrudge future generations from being able to do it differently? Please use my tax dollars for fast, exhaustive research on treating, curing, and preventing this devastating disease.
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