Posted by mama141 on November 7, 2005, at 8:53:29
In reply to Re: This was a rhetorical question everyone » mama141, posted by alexandra_k on November 6, 2005, at 20:32:42
> > I go out of town for a couple of days without my laptop and the ball rolls!!
>
> heh heh. yeah, you can't leave the boards for a couple days. maybe you are discovering your babble addiction / disease lol.
>
> > Secondly, WHEN was the part about "society" added? And WHO did the adding?
>
> I did the adding. I did the adding because somebody posted about native americans and how they seemed to have more of this alchohol disease thing going on than non-native americans. and about how they have a genetic difference that supposedly determines that they have this disease more than non-native american populations.
>
> what interested me was the point that over here maori have more addictions than non-maori. in fact... if you look at a minority group with a history of opression then what do you find? greater prevalence of addiction. and so my thought was... perhaps these people are more prone to inherited defect / disease (though one must be careful here... this is often used as a rationale for eugenics). and perhaps the history of opression (and the point that they have not fully recovered from that) actually has a lot to do with it...
>
> > Thirdly -- what about "choices" -- I sure didn't choose to get polio as a kid!! I did however CHOOSE to use alcohol the drown my sorrows so to speak, and I made that choice EVERY time I took a swollow.....
>
> yeah. and the more sorrows you have... the more likely you are to choose short term high over long term benefits.
>
> at least... that sounds fairly common-sense to me....
> ----------------------------
> Alexandra -
I may have mentioned this before, but I noticed that you are in New Zealand. We spent one term at university in Dunedin -- it was a great time, wonderful folks and terrific food. (I seem to remember being a bit chilly some of the time however.) We have lived all over the world and New Zealand is one of those places we have returned to, and hope to again one day. We've not really spent much time on the North Island yet.
As for the genetics -- it is a strange thing this inherited or not stuff. ie....There is a strong tendency toward mental illness in the female line on my mother's side. Of 15 women in four generations, eight have been diagnosed with some type of mental illness, myself included. It is rarely the same dx -- everything from bipolar to depression to dissociative disorders. In that group there have been four suicides.
Our oldest son has worked with Native Americans (he's a doc) and he says he has little doubt that there is a "genetic predisposition" of some type, but he says just what you did. He refers to it as "cultural depression". However regardless the "gene pool", you can STILL choose to stay out of the water or at least learn to swim and not drown in it!! MAMA
poster:mama141
thread:575263
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/subs/20051106/msgs/576305.html