Video of Martin Nicolaus speaking on “The Medical Model of Addiction”
In October of 2010, shortly after retiring as LifeRing’s founding leader (and author of three books related to LifeRing), Martin Nicolaus journeyed to Victoria, Canada to give a talk about “The Medical Model of Addiction” at a conference at the Eric Martin Institution in that city. The 54 minute presentation can be watched HERE.
One of the most important points, to me, is that alcoholics are created by…. suprise… Alcohol! This isn’t random opinion, it’s medical reality. It has nothing to do with moral failures or character defects or any of the other guilt-laden crap that some people try to shove down our throats, and it’s not even clear how much of it is genetic. When lab rats turn into alcoholics after repeated exposure to alcohol, you know immediately that the solution does not require you to find a new religion and put all your faith into your cat or your doorknob, it requires first and foremost that you totally stop drinking alcohol. The challenge then is, how do you do that and maintain that over the long haul, and this means making a decision to stop and toughing out the early days, and then doing specific things to build new habitual reactions to different triggers, getting support and finding a comfortable place where you can talk and listen, lots of stuff that you learn in better medical treatment facilities, from people here or elsewhere, books, etc.