2) I'm not sure whether it is good form (unless without consent?) to make private conversations public but you have exercised your perrogative....
4) People might think that "alcoholism is self-inflicted" for all kinds of reasons. Attempting to understand what those reasons are doesn't necessarily move the debate any further forward.
I do not wish to harm or embarrass anyone. I try (not always successfully) to not do or say something I'm not willing to put in the open. If something is said in an expressed confidence I honor that; if something is said or done in the shadows, I do not. I do not view a private msg on PPRUNE as an acknowledged or specific request for confidence; there are many reasons someone may not respond in an open forum. I am
not ascribing any sort of tainted motive to the comments I received and the ultimate question about who MADE me take my first drink; I merely responded.
I disagree that people think alcoholism is self-inflicted for
all kinds of reasons; that has not been my personal experience over the past 21 years. The reasons are usually very limited and pointed.
Long ago I recognized that the shame, stigma, and attitude about alcoholism and alcoholics will not appreciably change in my lifetime. So I'm on no crusade to do that. Those things will only be changed one person at a time and usually through personal experiences with a recovering person(s). Until the early-mid 70s, no alcoholic pilot in the US was ever allowed to fly again. We've come a long way since then.
Many of the myths and misinformation in the public sector are dissolved through personal, actual, up close experiences with people who are recovering.
There are all sorts of analogies that can be dreamt up as examples of self infliction....so to each his/her own.
Using
your analogy of the base jumper who performs many successful jumps and is then paralyzed, hence his injury is self inflicted; we could also say that any pilot who's flown many years and thousands of hours and is killed in a plane crash dies as the result of a self-inflicted cause. I've had many friends killed in crashes over the years but I have yet to hear anyone say their death was self-inflicted.
Nothing I say will have any affect on those whose minds are already made up, and that's okay. I don't intend to keep posting about this subject. All I've done is try to put forth information that has at least
some basis in truth and fact, along with personal experience.
Alcoholism is MY disease; it's not necessary that others understand it. It's only necessary that I do - because I will either live WITH it or I will die FROM it.
I wish everyone well.
Blue skies,
Lyle Prouse