Alcoholism is a sickness. It involves also a troublesome human behaviour. It is a triple sickness: a sickness of the body; a sickness of the mind; and also a sickness of the soul. The vast majority of Catholics believe that drinking alcoholic beverages with true moderation is within the bounds of the Christian virtue of sobriety. In most cultures and almost all religions it is pretty well agreed that there is something wrong or illicit about drunkenness. When a person acts in a way that makes it impossible for him to behave like a human being any longer, that is not morally correct. There are various subsidiary questions here too about how wrong it is; and about how drunk does aman have to be before he can reallu be called drunk. Buyt we are all agreed here that drunkenness, or the clearly excessive us of alcoholic beverages, is morally wrong.
Alcoholism is different from those other problems because alcoholism is drunkenness plus. Alcoholism is drunkenness plus serious life problems, plus the inability to stop drinking without help (and this includes the peculiar blindness which keeps so many alcoholics saying over and over that it is everything but the alcohol that is causing all their woes).
An alcoholic can be defined descriptively as that drinker whose drinking has been going on that way for years (as a rule), and who does get into serious life problems as a result of his drinking, and who can’t seem to stop drinking for good, even if he really wants to, unless he gets some outside help. They drink too much and get intoxicated, abuse people or spoil peace at home and in the neighbourhood. This description fits most people, for instance, who go to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) for help. Alcoholism is a sickness and a moral problem. He does not do it that way, or on purpose. “Don’t do it again” school or “swift-kick-in-the-pants” school of therapy cannot succeed. You cannot say to an alcoholic: “Just use your willpower, and that is all there is to it”. Alcoholism is a sickness of the body, as the physiologists can study. It is a sickness of the mind, as psychology ad psychiatry can study. Psychiatrists speak of alcoholism as a symptom of an underlying emotional or mental disorder of some kind. Obviously, some alcoholics are psychotic individuals, many are neurotic individuals. Alcoholism itself is a mental or emotional disorder of some kind, it is addcitive or compulsive or obsessive. They think of the next drink when they take the first drink. They always say that they can take it or leave it, but they always take it. Often, they set out to prove it: they give it up for Lent plus one day or one week extra. They rationalize. If they go to AA, they may give him the bar room test–it consists of taking just two, real drinks every day for three months, let us say, and no more than two drinks. If a person could drink that much regularly, day in and day out for three months, he ought not to be called an alcoholic. But he will not persist in it and succeed.
It is part of the sickness of the mind in alcoholism–it implies a diminution of freedom and a consequent diminution of human responsibility. They are threatened by their wives, or bosses or priests.
Scribbling 