The Medicalization of Alcoholism: Discontinuities in Ideologies of Deviance

Abstract

Over the last few decades, there has been a progressive abandonment of a moral-deviance conception of alcoholism, and an acceptance of a more modern disease concept. In some respects this can be argued to be, in part, illusion, with the disease concept only shallowly covering older, less potentially therapeutic perspectives. The purposes of this paper, data for which are derived from research conducted on attitudes of alcohol and drug program professionals, are two-fold: first, to briefly examine the sociohistorical origins of the disease concept of alcoholism and of its ready acceptance at least among professionals; second, to explore the degree to which the disease concept has been accepted by those professionals, not simply on the level of affirmation, but on the level of an acceptance of its implications.