[PairTheBoard]

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I am a recovering alcoholic, have been clean for 25yrs.

I read somewhere that alcoholism progresses in the body even after one has quit drinking. It went on to explain that if you drank for 15 years, quit for 10, and had a drink, that drink would affect your mind and body as if you had been drinking steady for 25 years. If that is true, that would lend credence to the disease theory, I would think.

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This is probably overstated. I suspect someone in AA came up with it decades ago and it keeps getting repeated as fact even though there are no studies to support it.

However, I believe most Alchoholics who relapse after a number of years of abstinence say that although they may have a brief period of somewhat controled drinking they relatively quickly decline to conditions similiar to the bottom they reached when they quit previously and then progress to even worse experiences. The fact that they are dealing with the drug with older bodies and minds probably plays a role in making things worse than ever as well.

I believe the better model is that abstinence arrests the progression of the disease but does not reverse it. Also, an older body and mind is even less capable of handling the destructive effects of the drug.

PairTheBoard