If You Attend Alcoholic Treatment Class, Successfully Considered To Be Non Alcoholic?

Posted on Fri, 27 Dec 2013

Question: If you attend a two year alcoholic treatment class, successfully, are you no longer considered to be an alcoholic? You no longer drink any alcohol.

Answered by Dr. Michelle Gibson James (2 hours later)

Brief Answer: the medical fraternity is trying to determine Detailed Answer: HI, thanks for using healthcare magic The most prevalent school of thought is that alcoholism is a lifelong condition. This thought is being argued against now in some medical circles. It is now thought and shown in some medical studies that some persons may recover from the addiction and dependence associated with alcohol use. This may not be true for everyone. The US National institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism has found that 20 yrs after symptoms of being dependent on alcohol, half of these persons can drink at very low levels without dependent symptoms. It may be best , at year 2 to still refrain from use , however because that study was conducted on persons who were not using after many more years. As stated earlier there are 2 schools of thought and there is no clear definition but the old idea of the chronic illness is being discussed and studied. Based on some of the present information, a person may say they are no longer an alcoholic but had a previous history of problems. I hope this helps, feel free to ask any other questions

Note: For further guidance on mental health, Click here.

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar