I am quite benevolent. I have never given you a neg rep, and yet....
toldailytopic: At what point does drinking alcohol become sinful?
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
- Start date
I am quite benevolent. I have never given you a neg rep, and yet....
Dena
New member
Yeah, I think I have to go with something like this too.
I'm not going to consider alcoholism a "sin". It's an addiction. It's a problem.
Dena
New member
The kind who is suffering emotionally.
IMJerusha
New member
One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor.....somewhere between Three and Floor is a sin. Drunkenness and out of control behavior as a result of alcohol intake is a sin.
None...especially to themselves...all more the very reason........
ragTagblues
New member
Hey bybee :wave:
Thats a bit of a sweeping statement that you cannot apply to everybody . . . . An addiction by it's very nature is something that prevents someone form leading their life as they normally would, affecting actions and responses to situations etc. etc.
My point is that the above could effect people at different thresholds; but still be an addiction to that individual, because addiction is individual to each person. Very often these people are Nurses, Social Workers, Police Officers etc. etc. Due to the stresses of the jobs and the people instinctive need to do 'good' in a bad world . . . .
If the Police Officer who can't cook himself dinner because he goes home and ends up in the bottom of whiskey bottle has an addiction, he has not lost the capacity to do good. Just like many others.
As soon as you start doing stuff that you wouldn't do sober.
But, having lived with alcoholics and drug addicts, I've seen good people become self absorbed and self satisfying at the cost of their spouses and their children.
I became a nurse because I wanted to make a difference in the world.
To have reported for duty whilst under the influence of alcohol would have been an ethical and moral breach as well as illegal.
I worked in the operating room. When "On Call" I had to be prepared to respond at a moments notice.
Would you want a surgeon or surgical nurse or anesthesiologist to operate on you if any one of them was under the influence of mind or body altering drugs?
I grew up in a time wherein accountibilty and responsibility went hand in hand. Cry babies were ignored and people on whom we could not rely were left behind or out of the loop.
Certainly, legitimate need was addressed.
I think the story of the old lady who spilled hot coffee on her lap then sued McDonald's for burning herself and won! Pretty much tells the sorry state into which we have been brainwashed.
We had a patient, an old veteran who had lost both of his legs, originally below the knee. He had become diabetic and came in for many stump revisions. I get a lump in my throat every time I think of him. He would be sitting up on his gurney in the waiting area with a smile on his face and a friendly greeting to any staff that passed by. His pat response to "Hi Joe, how you doing?" was "You know me, can't kick".
We loved that guy!
PureX
Well-known member
That is the nature of the addiction. The more obsessed the alcoholic becomes with being drunk, the more he will push away everything else in his life to get it. And his mind becomes practiced at seeking out and inventing excuses and justifications for getting drunk, so that he often blames everyone and everything around him as the cause and justification of that endless desire to be drunk. How else can he explain it to himself?
For an alcoholic, everything becomes an excuse to get drunk. Got a flat tire? That means 'God hates me, and I may as well go to the bar and just get stinking drunk!' This is the insanity of alcoholism: the solution to a flat tire is to get drunk, not to actually fix the tire.
Got fired from work for being drunk on the job? I could drink over something like that for months, when I was drinking! And all the while I would blame it on the boss, and on the world, and on God, and on everything and anything and anyone, rational or not. Because the goal was always the same - to work up and excuse to get drunk. That's what alcoholism is: an endless need to be drunk.
I think your memories are skewed. I think people are more likely now days to call someone out for being drunk on the job than they were in times past. Including doctors and nurses. Back in the 'old days', alcoholics were tolerated on the job far more than they are, now, because there were far fewer law suits and because squeezing every penny out of productivity was not such a national obsession.
That's the kind of thinking that alcoholics engage in. They would come across a single incident, that they don't really know anything about, and blow it up in their minds to be endemic of the whole world gone to hell, or out to get them, personally, and then use it as an excuse to drink for years. But in reality, it's just one story among millions, and it's not even the whole story. It actually represents nothing but what you want it to represent.
noguru
Well-known member
I agree with Purex's response to this but I also have to mention the whole story with the woman who sued McDonald's for buring her lap with coffee. McDonald's won the case upon appeal.
I'm not saying I disagree, but can you support that position?
noguru
Well-known member
The Yankees lost, I need a drink. The Yankees won, I need a drink. It's raining out, I need a drink. It's sunny out, I need a drink...
Part of the problem with the addict is that a lot of the negative attitudes that the rest of society can enjoy (probably not the right word) become the impetus for the addicts continued use. I remember after a couple of sessions with my substance abuse counselor having this realization, so I asked;
He just kind of looked at me with this resigned look and said;
What I have realized in the years since then, is that there is a certain level of liberation achieved and a power gained in seeing the world more clearly than most of the people around you. And as you mentioned before, we must then be careful not to abuse that.
noguru
Well-known member
It has been pretty well established by the people involved in substance abuse therapy that manageability/unmanageability is that dividing line which brings the addict into the realm of being uncontrolled.
I'm pretty sure IMJerusha didn't post anything about addiction.
noguru
Well-known member
Addiction is the result of continued sin in this regard. The same pathway that brings us to that first sin with the use of a substance is the pathway that is contnuously revisited by the addict.
Which has nothing to do with the conversation I'm having with IMJerusha, or any other conversation I'm having in this thread, except for this one, now.