- Aug 12, 2005
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I'm (first gen) middle class. My dad is a recovering alcoholic. The people I come across who are most understanding about alcoholism are educated middle class people. The people who are the most judgemental and least understanding re mental health are the working classes or older people/dinosaurs in general. I doubt Paul Gascoigne's friends and family in Newcastle would have been terrible receptive to the idea of drinking being a disease. I have no particular affiliation, and not that it matters but it's best not to generalise or analyse in terms of these things because the results are rarely palatable to those that do.
The line between mental health and personality trait is extremely blurred. I think there's a genetic marker that predisposes toward specific addictive behaviour. There are different types of alcoholics as there are people.. there are mental health components, life components but then there are also stupid, selfish traits that exacerbate alcoholics as well. I have met a great many recovering alcoholics, for instance, and almost to a man they will lecture you on life lessons that only they need, and you can see that although they stopped drinking, the real problem remains unchecked - they have that kind of need for a guru, that brings about the same behaviour in them. Cults and pseudo-spiritual groups are full of them.
Anyway, I'm not taking a side; rather, the opposite - I just think it's just as reductionist to lump everything into being a disease as it is scapegoating and blaming people with mental health issues resulting in alcoholism, and actually serves to exempt people from taking responsibility for their actions - such as beating wives, abusing and neglecting children.
I pretty much agree with all of this. The whole disease/not disease mental health/personality trait is pretty much just semantics and therefore pretty irrelevant in my opinion anyway. What you call it doesn't matter but the fact there's something wrong with the individual does. People like things to fit into nicely defined boxes, it's part of being human that we like to have neat names for things but alcoholism is clearly more complex than that.
The point I was trying to make was nobody who posts on here or writes drivel for the Sun is in a position to judge the guy. We just don't know what's going on do we. In Gazzas case maybe nobody does. Perhaps one day we'll fully be able to understand why people abuse drugs but in the meantime it's probably best not to make wild assumptions on what's going on with someone based on what you've heard through the media about a person you've never met.