Calling alcohol addiction a disease is one of the biggest frauds perpetrated upon consumers in the history of medicine, particularly since, in the majority of cases, heavy drinkers are encouraged to self-diagnose their disease and then seek life-long self-treatment at questionable, cultish venues like Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. As Stanton Peele pointed out in his book “The Diseasing of America”, like so many other addictions—e.g., to shopping, sex, gambling, eating, street drugs, etc.—chronic overuse of alcohol has been categorized wrongly as a disease on a par with diabetes, cancer, and arteriosclerosis. But just as with addictions to gambling, sex and drugs, as soon as you stop indulging yourself, the “disease” magically and instantly disappears. How can this happen? Diabetes doesn’t disappear if you stop eating sugar. Heart disease doesn’t reverse itself as soon as you stop consuming saturated fats.

Unlike with genuine diseases like diabetes or cancer, there is no laboratory test you can take that will prove you are an alcoholic. That you have the “disease” of alcoholism is a subjective diagnosis by the person doing the drinking, or it may be the diagnosis of well-meaning but ignorant friends or family members who’ve been adversely affected by the drinking. Often, greedy doctors and insurance companies enter the picture to make the diagnosis official, and the “patient” will be promptly dispatched to a pricey rehab center to dry out, read The Big Book, and memorize the Twelve Steps, which she is encouraged to follow religiously for the rest of her life or she will surely relapse (because, after all, she is informed, alcohol addiction is a disease).

Alcohol abusers are encouraged to believe that they have no control over their “disease” and that they need to rely on a Higher Power to help them resist the urge to drink. They are told that they will have to associate with other former alcohol abusers at AA meetings weekly if not daily for the rest of their lives, constantly rehashing their drinking days while nurturing new addictions to coffee, eating sugary sweets and smoking. They are instructed to get a Sponsor, a former drunk himself, who will supposedly keep them on the straight and narrow and be available whenever they feel tempted to drink. They are darkly warned to take it one day at a time and are incessantly brainwashed into believing that they may relapse at any moment if they are not constantly vigilant against Demon Alcohol. They are told to remember their former drinking history every single day of their lives.

In short, alcohol addicts are quickly turned into alcohol obsessives by the rehab system, and this all too often leads to a return to alcohol abuse. Why? If you believe that alcohol addiction is an incurable disease and that you’re powerless to stop it, then you’re setting yourself up to get drunk again. And in fact, there is a very high recidivism rate among AA members. On the other hand, if you believe that you've developed an addiction to alcohol caused by nothing more medical than depression, anxiety, a lack of self-control or low self-esteem, then the addiction can be conquered as long as you work to become a stronger, more confident, more independent person, leave your heavy drinking days behind you, and move on. In other words, if you look at alcoholism as a conquerable addiction, not as a life-long hopeless disease, you will have no excuse not to stop drinking, and to avoid it for the rest of your life, should you so choose.