06 November 2016

My 10-year case of abstinence, although not unique, surely, is practically a blind-spot for the thousands of researches of the alcohol addiction. It’s easy to imagine an addict’s tiresome path, described traditionally as a set of relapses followed by rehabilitation programs, about three weeks of enjoyment of “new life”, new drinking bouts and repeated treatment. However, the researches contain next to nothing about those people who leave this circle.

There is little evidence that any disease has the capacity to impose specific integrated behavioural strings in the place of previous ones. However, it may be the case that, in response to the conditions created by a disease, people will voluntarily adopt various strategies to cope with it; and that in a probabilistic sense, some strategies are more useful, and hence more likely, than others.