bungeejumper wrote:Mike4 wrote:ReformedCharacter wrote:Going off-topic I know, but I find that an extraordinary thing for a GP to say. I wonder how many alcoholics he successfully treated?
A couple of points. I may have exaggerated when I wrote that he said 'fill your boots', but his message was very clear that he saw the likely medical damage from alcohol abuse to me specifically as being an order of magnitude smaller than the medical damage to my body being caused by cigarettes. It was quite likely to have been a case of 'know your patient'.
RC, I might have missed something, but I don't recall Mike4 saying he was ever an alcohol addict - merely that he was aware of (a) the possibility of that, and (b) the implications if it happened. Both of which appear to have been headed off by his own good sense and the depth of his doctor's familiar knowledge.
So we're jumping the gun a bit if we equate a limited spell of heavy drinking with an alcohol addiction, are we not? Whereas the addiction word can safely be applied to anybody who gets past (shall we say?) five cigarettes a day long-term? Not the same thing at all. Just my 5p's worth.
BJ
No, Mike4 didn't say he was an alcoholic but apparently his GP said:
He said the damage done by alcoholism is a small fraction of that done by cigarettes and he would find it far easier to treat me as an alcoholic than as a victim of smoking
If he had said 'the damage done by drinking alcohol' rather than 'the damage done by alcoholism' then that would be a different matter because obviously not all those who drink alcohol are alcoholics.
RC