Letter to the Editor: Alcoholism

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Dear Editor,

I want to point out that your article on the front page about alcoholism is not accurate reporting about how this disease affects a person. Alcohol is a drug and prescriptions are drugs. To replace one drug with another does not make a person sober or rational. It just changes the addiction. Alcoholism is the tip of the iceberg of deeper more complex medical problems of body and mind.

When a doctor felt I needed a prescription a few years ago, one named in the article, it acted just like alcohol on my sober body of many years. Drugs that are liquid, prescription, or from other sources classify that: a drug, is a drug, is a drug. Removing all addictions not changing them is the solution.

The media needs to tell the truth. The American Medical Association declared this a disease in 1956. Appropriate treatment is available.

If a person really wants to regain sanity and live a rational life, Alcoholics Anonymous works. It is a simple program of daily abstinence, one day at a time. It has worked for millions, world wide, who have been in so much pain that the stigma of this disease did not deter their recovery. Let’s remove the shame and encourage a solution that restores those suffering to health.

Marilyn Redmond
Edgewood, WA

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