[Dan in Pasadena]

I don't get it. People's seeming "need" to label others. Like the label "loser" or the need to make pronouncements that, "if you just had better morals..." Morality has little to do with making mistakes that lead to addiction for people that are prone to it.

Excuses? I don't think admitting you have an addiction makes you any less responsible for what you may have done under the influence of your addiction, nor should it. If you kill someone drunk driving, the law says you're responsible to the point of prosecution...and you should be.

But even though you might be put in jail (and it's only a "might") that doesn't make it any less true that the person was addicted. It doesn't excuse him in any way, it just makes his actions somewhat more understandable - notice, I did NOT say "forgiveable".

Does it somehow make you feel "better" to label a person with alcoholism a "loser"? Somehow validate your own life as "better lived" than his? Okay, I'll agree if you are NOT an alcoholic that is wonderful, and you are fortunate, absolutely no argument.

But except for those few that literally have NEVER taken a drink in their lives, most of us have drunk liquor in our lives, usually to some degree of excess at a time or times. So if you have done so, are you really ALL THAT MORALLY SUPERIOR? If you're not an alcoholic, not somewhat pre-disposed to it, how exactly would that make your one or one hundred times drunk, "more moral" the many times that the alcoholic got drunk? I don't get it, I really don't.

But if you feel superior to the alcoholic, go ahead. That just gives license to the next person to feel superior to YOU for something else. We're all the same guys. The longer I live the more I know it.