It's an adverse, life threatening physical reaction that reliably occurs in a small subset of the population when a specific chemical is ingested. I'm not an im

It's an adverse, life threatening physical reaction that reliably occurs in a small subset of the population when a specific chemical is ingested. I'm not an immunologist and my understanding of alcohol allergy comes 100% from AA and the work done by 2 doctors in the 1930s. I expect the science has changed considerably since then but if the term "allergy" has evolved to no longer include this case, I believe that the evolution left behind something of critical importance to millions of people and replaced it with nothing. The term itself is less important than the understanding it conveys both to the afflicted and a judgemental public. The alcoholic craving is not similar to desire, there is no agency involved, and you can't think or will your way out of it. I have extensive personal experience with basically every other treatment modality for alcoholism that modern medicine has to offer and the allergy/obsession framework is the reason I am alive. It's not just me. The rooms of AA are filled with people who have tried everything else and been failed by it; nobody wants to wind up in AA. At any rate, if it's not an allergy anymore, it's something else in it's own category that is indistinguishable from an allergy to laymen.