Thursday, November 6, 2008

This is really something I should know.

If anyone is reading this, anyone at all who has the attention span to sit through my mindless, boring drivel and can actually stand it, I have a question:

What is the difference between a person with a problem and a functioning person with a problem. By which I mean, I've heard of alcoholics and I've heard of functioning alcoholics. Bulimics and functioning bulimics. So my question is, what is the difference.

It seems to me that being a functioning bulimic is worse than being a "regular" bulimic, just by the emphasis often used. Same with alcoholism. Does anybody know?

2 comments:

Sucre said...

Maybe functioning means a person is able to maintain a relatively normal mode of life, such as keeping a job, staying in safe housing, not leaning on others.

Seeing a person drunk and waving them farewell is diff than that person in one's home, jobless, loud and angry.

Nora said...

A functioning whatever can play the part of a regular person without harshing anyone else's day-to-day life. They keep their problems concealed enough to keep doing the behavior in question without disturbing anyone else to the point that some kind of intervention occurs. Or something like that. I think.