Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent, unprovoked seizures. These seizures are transient (meaning they come and go) symptoms due to abnormal, excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)
The seizure is the dramatic, visual part of the disorder -- but the actual problem lies in the brain's neurological activity. If you saw the symptom but did not understand the disorder you might assume that the problem is the seizure. In other words you might logically mistake the symptom for the disease.
And surely the symptom requires a response, to avoid injuring oneself or others, but responding to the seizure is not actually getting to the heart of the problem at all -- dealing with the symptom alone leaves the actual disorder untreated.
The same is true of alcoholism (all the "isms," really).
Drinking is the dramatic, visual part of the disease -- that's the symptom you can see -- like the seizure of an epileptic, or the spots and itching from chicken pox -- but the actual cause of the symptoms -- the disease -- is a different thing entirely. Yes, the drinking (the symptom) requires "treatment" (as in total abstinence from alcohol), to avoid injuring oneself or others, but treating the symptom alone leaves the disease itself untouched.
After all, alcohol is only mentioned in Step One of the Twelve Steps.
Or, to put it another way, alcoholism the disease actually has very little to do with alcohol.
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