Hi and welcome to our blog which marries empirical neuroscientific evidence of what happens to the brain – how various functions and regions of the brain are “hijacked” – in the transition to full blown alcoholism – so that the alcoholic (or addict) ends up having limited control over choice on whether to drink or not, with ancedotal “evidence” from hundreds of alcoholics we have met in “recovery” to illustrate how this “lay” experiential wisdom can help provide invaluable insights into this neurobiological disease called alcoholism.
After all, the role of science is to help predict behaviour, such as e.g. reasons for relapse, and to describe the phenomenological experience of a psychopathology in order that diagnostic definitions of a psychopathology may, via accurate assessment, result in effective treatment. We discuss how successfully science has done and is doing in respect to these objectives.
As alcoholics in “recovery”, we are aware, regardless of the massive strides that have been made in the last quarter of a century, that neuroscientific models sometimes fall short of describing “what it is like” to be an alcoholic, particularly a sober one.
We attempt to critique, challenge, praise and modify existing thinking and models of addiction so that they may better describe our own experiential realities and more effectively aid therapeutic management for our underlying condition.
There is one thing we can say with some certainty at the onset. There is more to alcoholism than drinking alcohol and the subsequent effect of alcohol on the brain, although there are dire consequences of this, of course.
What these underlying conditions are will become more evident in due course, via various blogs.
It is by discussing this underlying condition, we hope, that we may help those who suffer from alcoholism, who love and care for alcoholics and research into or treat alcoholics in clinical, treatment and other settings, to contribute to your sum of knowledge so that you are better placed to understand why alcoholics do the things they do, behave the way they do and feel less inclined to strangle them.
Alcohol did not solely make us alcoholics, a predisposition to an underlying condition did.