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Alcoholism as a Form of Humour: Is Captain Haddock safe for children?

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Shivam302001
Member
#31 · Posted: 24 Jan 2019 04:03
jock123

Exactly, alcoholism is a medical condition, no doubt but you aren't born with that condition either. You have to take the plunge before you drown.

Thanks for bringing the medical aspect. I knew that smoking was a medical condition and my grandfather got out of that habit through sheer will power without any medications. So I do believe moral judgement and courage plays a role in case of alcoholism too. If you know what you are doing is wrong, and everyone is telling you that is wrong, then with the proper support and moral courage anything is possible.
jock123
Moderator
#32 · Posted: 24 Jan 2019 18:06
Shivam302001:
you aren't born with that condition either.

You've made a medical breakthrough there if you can prove that, because the literature suggests that genetics plays a part in about 50% of the cases.

Shivam302001:
If you know what you are doing is wrong, and everyone is telling you that is wrong, then with the proper support and moral courage anything is possible.

That's still putting a moral judgment on it, rather than treating it as a disease. Different cultures, in different place and at different times all have and have had their rules and opinions about all sorts of practices and habits, but that's not to say that they have any actual bearing on human physiology and behaviour. Some people may be more predisposed to the effects of alcohol than others, and find that even starting moderate drinking can quickly lead to dependency.

I can't understand why your grandfather smoked, for example, but it doesn't put me in a position that I can judge his behaviour right or wrong. Smoking might have been his only indulgence, and he might have believed advertising that said smoking was good or even healthy; many people took up smoking in the army, because armies gave their soldiers a tobacco ration, just as the Navy used to give sailors rum.

It has been estimated that, over the course of time, statistically more soldiers who fought in World War II died as a result of the tobacco ration they were given, than were killed by actual weapons of war; but I can't condemn them as lacking "moral courage" as I have never been through a war.
Shivam302001
Member
#33 · Posted: 24 Jan 2019 19:34
You may have realized that I have almost no knowledge of alcoholism as you aptly pointed out. But here is a site which may be of some use to us.

As it is pointed out, doesn't your continual insistence that alcoholism is a medical condition and is genetic (I agree), provide the alcoholics with the perfect excuse to keep on drinking? Personally, if my family would have been populated with alcoholics and I knew that it was genetic, a medical condition, nay a chronic ailment, and I was bound to become an alcoholic whether I want to or not, sooner or later- would there be much for the cause of me not taking to drinking?

It is good to take the scientific aspects into the picture, but we must not forget the human aspect. We also have a choice to correct ourselves. Just because the soldiers that you mentioned were brave enough to give their blood for their country does not automatically qualify them to be eligible to fight against themselves. And anyway, I don't think they knew the ill effects of drinking or smoking then to make an attempt to stop themselves. Similarly, my grandfather has never been asked to take part in a war, but he was courageous enough to stop himself from his life-long addiction. He got to know about the ill effects of smoking and tried to stop himself. Human beings, when taken as a whole, become predictable as the Sun that rises in the East every morning. But, in the individual level, it is a totally different matter.

I hope I made some sense, because I am a little bit, how should I put it, dazed after talking so much.

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