Disease
From "The Three Legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous":
"We
know of course that the alcoholic is a sick person. That is a very
simple phrase. It is today a phrase that is widely and generally
accepted, and yet you and I know that it was not so long ago that the
alcoholic was regarded as a nuisance, a pest, a person who could snap
out of it if he really wanted to. He was regarded as a spoiled brat and
a no-good. Today we know
that he is an individual who is sick, and we know that he is sick in an
area of which our understanding is perhaps the least of any area in
medicine, namely, illness of the emotions. “ Dr. W.W. Bauer,
1955"
2001 AAWS, Inc.; Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, pg. 239