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Originally Posted by kim_johnson
but the thing is... that psychiatric diagnoses are basically short names that apply to a certain number of behavioral symptoms. so providing a diagnosis is just a short way of describing your behavioral symptoms. so... you drink much more than is good for you / good for others and hey presto you get to have 'alcohol abuse disorder' or 'alcoholism' or whatever... alcoholism is particular controversial (many believe that god somehow implants this disease entity that has yet to be discovered by science that stays with you all your life whether you are ever exposed to alchohol or not whether you ever drink or not). some people benefit from not drinking. ever. some people find it really very very very very hard to not drink. or really very very very very very hard to stop drinking once they have started. i think it is a shame that diagnostic label seems to be what is required for people to feel their distress / difficulty is legitimate or understandable by others or whatever...
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oh sorry, i guess i didn't explain...i didn't know i was alcoholic or what alcoholism was. (dummy me and i was about 35) i had gone to my internist cause i had health complaints and told him the only thing i could give him as input for the whole situation was that i thought i was drinking too much and prior to that i'd never drunk much at all. he pooh-poohed my input and upped my zanex. thank goodness for me i didn't fill that rx or i'd probably be dead.
since seeing the doctor didn't seem to work, i then contacted an alcohol related facility for analysis about my drinking. i am probably the only person on earth that has ever been relieved for this label, alcoholic, but i knew something was wrong but didn't know what til they gave me that term (label) and became educated on what alcoholism is. i have no doubts about their diagnosis even 18 years sober. so providing me with a dx enabled me to recover from the condition.
as for the other thought provoking part of your post...
i'm sure some people may have had incorrect dx on whatever and it could carry itself around in their medical records and harm them. in my case bipolar disorder has a miriad of symptoms/behaviors, some similar in a population and some equally different.
so for me, i just see these "labels" as identifying tools for treatment of an individual. it really doesn't matter to me what they call something in me that needs fixing, i just need to know how or learn how to fix it.
thanks for your thoughts on this. i enjoyed our exchange of ideas.
