PO Box 1980

The November 2003 Grapevine loosely conflates disease with illness. The first 164 pages of the Big Book refer to alcoholism as an illness or malady, rather than a disease. As Bill W. said, when he addressed the National Clergy Conference on Alcoholism in 1960: "We [AA] have never called alcoholism a disease because, technically speaking, it is not a disease entity. For example, there is no such thing as heart disease. Instead there are many separate heart ailments or combinations of them. It is something like that with alcoholism. Hence, we did not wish to get in wrong with the medical profession by pronouncing alcoholism as a disease entity. Therefore, we call it an illness, or malady--a far safer term for us to use."