I accept that I'm labeled as an addict and an alcoholic; I readily admit it several times a week. Yesterday, I was asked to speak to class at a local college about my experiences in recovery and how the Dr. Phil Show gave me a start. I was excited about the opportunity and agreed to speak to the class.

After agreeing to speak to the class I asked the instructor what's the title of the class. He told me, "The class is called Social Problems in America."

While I knew I was being asked to talk about my experiences with drugs and alcohol, my ego expected that I would get there and tell these college students a few entertaining stories and tell them how my life has changed for the better now that I'm sober. It's a little bit ego-deflating to hear that I've been labeled, "a Social Problem in America."

That got me thinking. Am I a social problem? Or, was I a social problem?

I certainly did not start out as a social problem.

Addiction and alcoholism is basically a disease of the mind and body that effects the person physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Once the aspect of an individual’s whole being is negatively affected by the disease, THEN that person becomes a social problem. But as a babe in a mother’s arms, a genetic load yet to be unfolded, we simply have a disease.

The things we do under the influence such as driving drunk, stealing our grandmothers television, "diverting" narcotics from our jobs, lying endlessly, disappointing the ones that love us with our erratic behavior, shooting up while on the job as a nurse, yes then we become social problems.

What other disease does this? Take diabetes, cancer or multiple sclerosis (MS); are the people afflicted with those diseases thought of as social problems? Are there entire college classes devoted to the social implications of those diseases? No they don't.

I have long said that society does not hate us alcoholics and addicts for having the disease, they hate the wreckage we leave in our wake when we’re under the influence.

Such is the deal. Hopefully we get to a point in our recovery that we can take responsibility for the wreckage we caused when we were under the influence. Even if we take responsibility and try to right the wrongs we caused, many people still will not forgive us. The damage has been too great to repair.

So yes; as an impaired nurse, responsible for other people’s health I was a social problem. But I didn’t start out that way and I hope that’s not how I’ll be remembered by my children when I’m gone.

My hope in speaking to a college class is to clarify what the disease of alcoholism and addiction is and at what point the social problems begin.

In dispelling myths I hope to shed a more positive light on the human beings who are inside the alcoholics and the addicts.

In the mean time I need to buy my grandmother a new television!