I turn to an unused old email account, and I find this amid hundreds of messages. In my research on AA, I found it impossible to draw a straight historical biography on the disease metaphor, but there are antecedents, going back to Benjamin Rush in the 1780s. I published a somewhat related paper on this question: Swora, Maria Gabrielle, 2001, "Personhood and Disease in Alcoholics Anonymous" Mental Health, Religion, and Culture Don't believe everything you think. --- On Mon, 8/11/08, Peter Ferentzy <[log in to unmask]> wrote: From: Peter Ferentzy <[log in to unmask]> Subject: addiction as metaphor To: [log in to unmask] Date: Monday, August 11, 2008, 3:07 PM Hi All, I've taken an interest in the idea of psychobehavioral ailments as metaphoric "diseases", and am interested in pursuing the matter in depth. Does anyone know the origins of AA's allergy theory? I doubt that the practitioner who speaks for them, Silkworth, created the idea himself (though I could be wrong). Then there's the public health model, which draws parallels to infection control. Does anyone know where this began? Thanks, Peter