Opinion | Can we think critically about our response to alcoholism?

Alcohol Awareness Month in April provides a timely reminder that, even amid a devastating opioid epidemic, we lose nearly twice as many American lives every year — more than 178,000 — to our love of alcohol.

It’s an ancient problem that persists because we still judge, punish and exclude the alcoholic in the manner of an escaped goat in the time of Moses. We choose this response instead of preventing and treating a condition the human ego will always seek: distraction from painful parts of the human condition, including abuse, loneliness, anxiety and untreated mental illness.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s proclamation for Alcohol Awareness Month correctly calls on all Michiganders “to support the efforts to reduce and prevent underage drinking in our state by limiting alcohol availability to minors.” But all Michiganders have an additional responsibility if we hope to make progress against this disease as old as human history.

It is long past time to quit ignoring our human nature and address this disease with the seriousness we bring to any public health problem. Help is still in short supply and needlessly hard to access, much harder than for high blood pressure or type II diabetes.

It’s easy to stop reading here and again blame the individual. The problem is that approach has never worked. We all can think of examples in our families or among friends and colleagues. The science dates to 1956, the year the American Medical Association called alcoholism a disease.

Our more recent focus on fentanyl and other drugs is appropriate, as recent news reminds us, with a tragic spike of six fatal overdoses in less than a week in the Lansing area. Overdose is still the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-44. Despite much-welcomed progress in Michigan and across the country, fatal drug poisoning claimed the lives of an estimated 87,000 Americans last year.  Overdoses and alcohol combine to be our third leading cause of death, a population survival problem magnified many times over for surviving spouses, children and loved ones.

Drugs are the more modern problem but share alcohol’s insidious promise of chemical distraction. 

We’ve been drinking forever. History is full of warnings, from Plato to Scripture, about the damage of excess. Various temperance movements ebbed and flowed through the centuries, until the roots of the modern 12-step approach took hold in the mid-20th century in America, with the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous. In 12-step and treatment we get to the healing work of overcoming distraction. Mid-Michigan Recovery Services arose from this movement and is 65 years old this year. 

Those decades of experience tell us that any reader can expect distraction and addiction to claim a family member, friend or colleague. Can we reconsider how the future will go for that person and how we’ll react personally and collectively? Can we help with those distractions? Can we follow the money, can we vote for health care that recognizes distraction and funds treatment for our third leading cause of death?

Usually the great harms are a result of miscasting the problem-causing machines of destruction. We still need a well-oiled machine to address alcohol and drug use. Too err is to be human. But we won’t make any progress by continuing to beat the goat.