Do you have a couple of hours?

LISTEN: In order to stop living in the streets, I was told to say that I was an alcoholic so that I could enter a program catering to the homeless addicts. Thousands of anonymous meetings later, with the word ‘disease’ uttered 5 times per meeting, I will admit that I believe that any addiction is a choice.

Now. I’m expressing my opinion as someone who has never been addicted to anything. I don’t believe that mental illnesses are a choice but I don’t think that addiction is a mental illness. Or a disease. Every decade there seems to be a breakthrough in which the ‘addiction gene’ is found, only to fizzle out (rather like the ‘gay gene’).

In those thousands of meetings, being amongst thousands of addicts, I think that alcoholism is a choice. Any addiction is a choice.

My 2 cents.