The Real Story on Alcoholism

Simon Say's:

Hey all, Seven months sober now as of August 10, 2008. They say it takes a year to begin to reverse the damage done by years of abuse. In my case it may be longer, throughout my adventures I've come to realize that I've been exceptionally abusive. Three suicide attempts has left my brain a little more damaged than the average.
For the uninformed out there I wasn't visiting the psych wards because I was a little intoxicated. I was there because I almost died and had no intention of giving up that quest. Practice makes perfect. I don't believe in the old saying that suicide is a "Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem". I don't care how temporary depression is supposed to be, for me it's been a permanent condition. Start throwing anxiety attacks on top of the depression as well as other disorders and there's no way you can tell that person that things are going to improve.
I've been attending group therapy for health and wellness for the last couple of months and now I'm moving on to a different group. This time it's DBT, 12 hours of outpatient therapy every week for as long as it takes. DBT is not new to me, I participated in a 90 day inpatient DBT treatment program not too long ago. DBT stands for Dialectic Behavioral Therapy and it's based on Eastern philosophy. Mostly Zen Buddhism which I'm totally into so I fit right in. It's a new alternative to the old drudgery of 12 step programs and the main premise is to build a life worth living. I start my first group tomorrow afternoon. One informative note I would like to add here is that DBT is something you have to actively seek and demand once you're in the mental health system, otherwise you'll end up in a 12 step program which I'm not totally dismissing; however, it hasn't worked well for me.
I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not an alcoholic and you probably aren't one either. What I am is a man with a lot of different mental illness issues whose only legal relief came out of a bottle. I find it a little amazing that as intelligent as our species has become it still is blind in many areas. Alcoholism is definitely over diagnosed. It's an automatic diagnosis to anyone who self medicates with alcohol, when for a lot of people the alcohol is only a symptom of wide variety of other illnesses that go untreated because of simple ignorance of our medical professionals and education institutions. As a person aware of this condition it's nearly impossible to convey this small tidbit of knowledge to our societies medical professionals. In many cases it's due to the narcissistic nature of Md's.
I do believe that 12 step programs can be of a lot of help to the real alcoholic, ( a person with a psychological and physical obsession with alcohol). On the other side of the same coin I don't believe the 12 steps of Alcoholic's Anonymous are of much use to the mentally ill. Depression, anxiety attacks, episodes of mania are mental illnesses, not obsessions with alcohol. Most people suffering from these illnesses but in varying degrees. When these illnesses become so severe that they interfere with a persons ability to march in step with the masses, then you have a problem that needs to be treated like any other illness. The sad fact is that these illnesses are too often ignored if the individual suffering from them has used alcohol for relief. The immediate diagnosis (knee jerk) is alcoholic. The tragedy is that these people often end up dead.
I've come a long way. I too had many misconceptions about mental illness and therefor understand the ignorance that pervades our society. Most people will never develop their knowledge on this subject until the day they begin to realize that it doesn't just happen to other people. One day they may wake up and find it almost impossible to get out of bed.