Recovering From a Disease in Anonymity
Recovering From a Disease in Anonymity – important to so many but detrimental to so many others. Is there a balance? Can it be both ways?
Think about it…if your loved one had cancer, both your loved one and you and the rest of your family would be surrounded by supportive friends and family. Your loved one would have visitors, be flooded with Get Well cards and flowers, and you would be receiving homemade dinners and desserts and your children would be cared for by loving family and friends while you stayed with your loved one in the hospital. Yet, for someone recovering from the disease of alcoholism, there is none of this. Families who are fortunate enough to have a loved one decide to enter a residential treatment program, for example, are left to continue the denial that drove the disease in the first place. They often don’t even tell their own parents, certainly not their friends, and when their neighbors ask, “Where’s John? I haven’t seen him in a while,” they’re left to respond, “Oh, he’s visiting his folks for a few weeks,” and from then on, duck in and out of the house as quickly as possible to avoid any further questions.
Why?
It’s because, as a society, we still don’t understand that alcoholism is a disease – a disease you can die from. And so it continues to be shrouded in shame and viewed as a moral weakness and shameful lack of willpower. We don’t understand that alcoholism is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease, with symptoms, characteristics and contributing factors – just like any other disease. (If you haven’t read it, my September 22, “It Really Is a Disease” post will help you better understand.)
So please, do what you can to share this information so that we can start talking about it and our loved ones can start recovering openly, surrounded by the love and support of their families and friends. Remember… back in the 1950s and 60s, cancer was known as the “Big C” and people quietly died from it, and in the late 1970s and 80s, HIV/AIDS was spreading like wildfire because society would not talk about it. Now, we raise money and awareness to conduct research and find new treatments for both diseases…it’s are out there, in the open and people are paying attention to their symptoms and getting treatment earlier, rather than too late, and best of all, people are taking proactive precautions to guard against these diseases where possible. We can do the same for alcoholism — it’s a disease; a treatable disease.
Lisa Frederiksen
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