The "disease" of alcoholism.

[madnak]

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I would like to pull this back on-topic.

If you would like to discuss 12 step programs, please start another thread.

Is alcoholism a disease like cancer or not?

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This question is wholly semantic and meaningless.

Alcoholism isn't analogous to cancer. It may or may not be analogous to depression. You can call it a "disease" if you want, it doesn't matter. The question is relevant not to doctors but to politicians, who are the ones who care about whether a particularly charged word is associated with a given subject or not. In psychiatric terms, it is certainly useful to label it as an illness, and that is the only thing that matters.