You have to look behind the curtain to see who benefits from reclassifying alcoholism as a disease. (You can do it for yourself, but as a hint, check who benefited from the long discredited recovered memory syndrome) Why wasn’t it a ‘disease’ 50 years ago (or whatever)? I think we can probably agree that both alcoholism and anorexia nervosa are illnesses, mental illnesses, but once you classify them as diseases you are are corrupting the language, which itself is a lively modern disease of another kind, if you will. Because if alcoholism, a behavioral problem, with certain physical causes like all behavioral problems, if alcoholism is a disease, then why not biting one’s nails being a disease? To say that alcoholism is a disease without questioning the very recent change of its classification, is repeating mindlessly received wisdom, which is no wisdom at all.
why not biting one’s nails being a disease?
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It is, in a way, a form of self-mutilation....again a mental illness that becomes a disease when it can kill you. Such as “cutting” and depression can lead to suicide.