Quote

"The knowledge that some people can have enough while you never can is the single most compelling piece of evidence for a drinker (insert bulimia wherever necessary) to suggest that alcoholism is, in fact, a disease, that it has powerful physiological roots, that the alcoholic's body simply responds differently to liquor than a nonalcoholic's.  Once I started to drink, I simply did not know how or when to stop: the feeling of need kicked in, so pervasively that stopping didn't feel like an option.  My friend Bill explains it this way to his mother, who has a hard time wrapping her mind around the disease concept of alcoholism and who holds fast to the belief that he could have controlled his drinking if only he'd exerted enough will.  He says, 'Mom, next time you have diarrhea, try controlling that.'  Crude, perhaps, but he gets the point across."

-Caroline Knapp, Drinking: A Love Story