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I've always disliked her. Tried to talk my brother into breaking up with before they were engaged. He kinda did, and then got back with her. I tried to ask him if he was really really sure he wanted to marry her. He said he loved her. My dad and I joked that if my brother changed his mind last minute we'd have the truck ready and high tail him out of the wedding. I'm not gonna tell me brother "I told ya so", but between you and me ... i fuckin told him so.
This lady is in her mid 30s and she has two lovely older siblings. Its not a generational thing, or a 'how she was raised' kind of thing. Its a her thing. I think before this incident I just really disliked her and thought of her as a jerk and responsible for all her crappy behavior. This seemed beyond her normal level of being annoying and petty that it finally got me to stop and think "is this alcoholism?"
In line with @raggedy_anthem 's point, and your point: It might not be strictly medically alcoholism. But yeah I get a strong sense that if alcohol wasn't in the picture things would be better.
Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.
Behaviorism has identified four drivers of behavior: attention, escape, access, and sensation. Some memory in her past, I’m guessing, carries a stressful semantic meaning which makes her feel she is required to escape. By my experiences, probably an initial event and a reinforcing event.
I find this claim appealing, but it's so poorly-defined as to be impossible to test. "Emotional component" is a placeholder - it might just as well be phlogiston or black bile.
There are three categories of emotions (per Triessentialism): Identities, Roles, and Imperatives.
Each of these can drive compulsions in search of fulfilling or self-validating those emotions. The specific ones are so subjective to each individual's experiences and history that even guessing would be foolhardy.
I'm still struggling to understand what claim you're making about the nature of alcoholism. You stress that wants and needs are (imperative) emotional components. So is it just that people stop being alcoholics when they stop wanting/needing to drink alcohol? But that's almost tautological.
Alcoholics generally don’t drink because they “want to drink,” they drink to fulfill one of the behavior functions (attention, escape, access, and sensation) because they can’t fulfill a different emotion elsewhere in their life.
Somewhere in their past, someone else made a bad choice which not only impacted their lives negatively, it also injured an instinct: the choice made them believe their world wasn’t how it should be and they’re just going to have to live with being personally screwed by a bad deal. It could be a bad identity: they’re born with the wrong skin tone or genitals. It could be a bad relationship: their teacher cares more about homework than understanding. It could be a bad imperative: they didn’t get something they needed because someone neglected them. Often it’s because one of their caretakers was neglectful or even abusive.
What’s key to understanding alcoholism is the compulsive nature of the disorder: they feel driven to drink, and they haven’t had the tools, the technique, the time, or the teachers to help them find and disarm the emotion which compels them.
Alcoholics Anonymous gives all of these things, in an atmosphere of nonjudgmental camaraderie, patience, and mentorship where people who realize they need help can find it. The program was so successful (compared to other things) that it became the model for recovery from other addictions, such as narcotics, sex addiction, and life drama addiction (CoDependents Anonymous).
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Honestly all of those sound valid for her.
She does seem to crave attention in social situations. She is a consummate extrovert.
She has complained enough about my brother that the rumors have reached me, even though I am in a totally different social circle and live two hours away. She thinks of him as emotionally unavailable. So escaping that.
Access to social interaction that she seems to desperately crave.
And feeling something. (maybe sensation is a stretch for her)
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