04 Sep 2025 7 min read Dysfunction Diaries

Stop Calling Alcoholism a Disease

Why alcoholism isn't a disease and why the language matters more than people realize.

Hear me out.

I’m not trying to sound dismissive, and I’m not here to mock or undermine anyone’s recovery. I’m just speaking as someone who knows addiction down to her bones.

I never used a bottle or a needle, but I lost myself in the same oblivion.

I was never officially diagnosed with an eating disorder, but I damn sure knew I had one. And I’ve never been formally diagnosed with OCD either, but the patterns were all there: counting, controlling, checking, rechecking, and checking again.

I chased both escape and perfection until it nearly killed me.

Discipline became an obsession.
Control became my coping mechanism.
And the moment it'd start to slip, I'd double down.

My mantra was simple, warped, and deadly: eating is cheating.

The scale was both my barometer and my altar. I weighed myself multiple times a day, and the number dictated my mood, outfits, and even my plans.

I called them "hacks":

Cinnamon sticks to keep my mouth busy (they burn the hell out of your lips, btw).
Sleeping with a heating pad to “sweat it off”.
Waking up at 3 a.m. to run laps and work out in the dark with a headlamp like I was training for combat.

Diuretics. Restriction. Chew and spit. Overexercising. Bingeing. Purging.
A strict diet of watery shakes, raw vegetables, cabbage soup, and dry tuna.
I drank so much goddamn carrot juice that my skin turned orange.

I lost more weight. My hair thinned out, and I was always freezing.
And people praised me for it, admiring my "discipline" and envying my “success”.

I had reached a point where it (obviously) wasn't about my health anymore. I chased control because I'd built an entire identity around "winning."

And then the house of cards finally collapsed. After I was sexually assaulted, my control vanished. My body revolted, screaming at me to EAT ALL THE THINGS!

Food became my go-to substance. Peanut butter, especially - I'd eat it by the bowlful, like ice cream. It was easy to get, and once I started, I couldn't stop.

It lingered in my mouth, hit that pleasure switch, and demanded another spoonful before I’d even swallowed the last. That’s what made it the perfect "fix" for me.

All the while, I was telling myself, "It's not like I'm doing drugs or drinking. It's food, not heroin. Food is perfectly legal and we need it to live anyway...right?"

So I ate like I’d never eaten in my life. My hunger cues were so wrecked that I gorged and never felt full. And when the fullness finally hit, I felt like I was splitting open from the inside.

That's when the devil on my shoulder suggested the quickest way to make it stop. Until then, I'd sworn I'd never go that far. But I did.

I’d binge, hate myself, promise to “start fresh” tomorrow, and then do it all again.

And the bitch of it was (and still is) yes - we do need food to live.
So how the hell do you recover from a drug you literally can't quit?

I was terrified at what was happening to me, but I was more terrified of what could happen if I didn't find a way to get through it.

I sought out a counselor to help me process so much: the unresolved feelings from my divorce, the grief of losing four loved ones in rapid succession, and the misdirected blame of the assault.

In those sessions, I finally understood how my “success story” had gone off the rails: I was at war with a body I could no longer control.

Addicted to shrinking myself and addicted to filling the void in my soul.
The only reason nobody called it addiction was that mine looked like discipline.
It looked like success.

Here’s what’s always bothered me: why does one get the dignity of being called a disease while the other gets written off as a moral failure?

Somewhere back in the fifties, the AMA classified alcoholism as a disease. And just like that, insurance companies could cover it, and rehab centers sprouted up like Starbucks.

On paper, that reads like compassion and progress, right? And sure, maybe the byproduct was, since it delivered something everyone secretly yearns for: a reason that their bad choices aren't their own fault.

But, it's also 'good business'; classify drug and alcohol abuse as 'diseases' and now you've got a billion-dollar industry. Whole empires have been built on detox and 12-step.

Meanwhile, the rest of us with compulsions like disordered eating, gambling, porn, or shopping will never get such mercy, even though brain scans prove they are all neurologically identical.

Know why?

Cause the rest of us are even more profitable as we are.

There’s no lobby labeling binge eating a disease when the diet industry makes more money than most countries.

No one's gonna medicalize gambling as a mental health disease when casinos literally bankroll entire cities.

And porn is a multi-billion-dollar global industry that thrives on compulsive users.

So, in other words, if it’s drugs or alcohol, you’re sick.
If it’s anything else, you’re just weak.

That being said, treatment exists for all of it- eating disorders, gambling recovery, and sex addiction programs - but without the official “disease” designation, they're basically self-funded self-improvement projects.

You pay out of your own pocket, and you pray it works.

George Carlin said, "When you control the language, you control thought".
And that's exactly what happened. Authorities changed the words, and the words changed the meanings.

I get it. I really do. That kind of framing saves lives and removes the stigma, all while giving people something to fight for.

But it's also a double-edged sword because it gives you an easy out, a way to shrug and say, “I can’t help it, I'm sick.”

Why am I talking about alcoholism? Because I'm surrounded by it.

I've spent the last couple of years living in the devastation of what drugs and alcohol do to the families involved, while others deny the severity or hide behind their own diagnosis.

And I'm sick of it.

If I’d ever tried to explain my bingeing or starvation as something I couldn’t control, it wouldn’t have mattered - it was the golden era of diet culture.

The smaller you got, the more people wanted that success too. Nobody gave a damn how you got there.

Plenty of celebrities have said the same thing: addiction is addiction.

Robert Downey Jr. called it “a garden-variety disease.” Matthew Perry called it “cunning, baffling, and powerful.” So true.

Elton John admitted his bulimia was worse than cocaine. Demi Lovato compared her eating disorder directly to drug use. Terry Crews went public about the porn addiction that nearly destroyed his marriage.

They all describe the same cycle: obsession, loss of control, shame, relapse.

The truth is, people praised me when I was losing weight, but no one ever saw the dark side of it. The nights I would hide, locked in that same cycle of obsession, shame, and relapse as any alcoholic or addict.

Nobody ever knew what I was doing behind closed doors, and I've never spoken about my eating disorders until now.

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My husband’s family has addiction woven deep within it, and yet he himself isn’t an addict. He's remarkably well-adjusted (thank God).

Which is proof to me that addiction isn’t binary; it’s nature and nurture.

Right after we met, he noticed immediately that I was skipping meals. He knew what was happening because he’d witnessed it before with a family member.

He told me he couldn’t, wouldn’t watch me do that to myself, that he was “waving the red flag.” That’s our private way of saying Hey, I can’t put up with this, but I love you enough to call it out.

He waved that flag not too long ago, when my weight dropped over the past year. But this time, it happened because I’d cut out processed foods and taken to mindful eating and healthy coping strategies for stress.

It took a lot of convincing to assure him I wasn’t falling back into those old patterns, but I know he still watches me when he thinks I don’t notice.

But I’m okay with that.
He keeps me honest, but more importantly, I keep me honest.

The truth is, I am in recovery, but I never did twelve steps or anything like that.

I believe wisdom shows up in many places if you’re paying attention: in Rumi’s poetry, in the Stoics’ reminders that pain is inevitable but despair is optional, in the Buddha’s teaching on impermanence.

In other words, I shamelessly cherry-pick whatever helps me stay the course.

And I still fight it every day, because those old demons are always right there, but every day is a choice not to listen to them.

I'm finally the one calling the shots.

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