Is alcoholism a chronic disease or a moral defect? I hope it is a disease. I need to believe that it is. Because if it isn't, I am a horrible person. From the age of 19 to 27, whenever I drank - and I couldn't stop drinking - I stole, lied, blacked out and punched police officers. If it isn't a disease, then I chose to do it. I decided to spend my 20s with my face down a drain.

David Cameron thinks I did. Trevor McDonald thinks I did. Rod Liddle thinks I did; he said so in a Spectator article he wrote about addiction that joked about fat people being burned alive. And many of you want to think I did. In his speech in Glasgow a fortnight ago, the Tory leader listed alcoholism as one of the "social problems [that] are often the consequences of the choices people make".

It was tucked away in his list of evil, but it was there. The doubt. The idea that, should the alcoholic really want to stop drinking, he or she can. Should we - you - pay for the tricky, often impossible, rehabilitation of alcoholics, the morons who keep drinking when all joy is gone? Or should we treat alcoholism as a disgusting hobby, born of moral frailty and a desire to live on incapacity benefit and watch Richard and Judy all day long?

Trevor McDonald, perhaps with the best of intentions, revealed on the News at Ten last week that he subconsciously thinks the same. He said that he hoped Ronnie Wood would "end his alcoholism once and for all". Wood can stop drinking but he can never stop being an alcoholic. He has a chronic disease. Can you "end" diabetes? Or schizophrenia? Or epilepsy?

This so angered me that I decided to research the scientific evidence on the causes of alcoholism. I admit I am biased. But the scientists who conducted these studies aren't. I learned that just 3.6% of the UK population are dependent drinkers (according to Alcoholics Anonymous), but another report has found that if your identical twin is an alcoholic you have a 50% to 60% chance of becoming one - even if you were separated at birth. This shows, surely, that alcoholism is partly determined by genetics.

Alcoholics are born with a strong predilection for the disease. We don't have a stop button. We binge-drink from the beginning and we lie to ourselves about it. If you - non-alcoholic reader - were to drink all day, every day, it would be a sign of self-indulgence. You have a genetic profile that makes it possible to stop. We don't have that. Our genetics tell us to drink and drink and never stop.

This is why all recovering alcoholics sound the same, as if they have memorised a pain-ifesto. Alcoholism is essentially a five-act play: they didn't feel safe, they drank, they felt better, they couldn't stop drinking, they lost everything. Curtains. Then they stopped, but they don't know why, and they fear its return every day. Yesterday, at AA, I spoke to a mild-mannered, well-dressed and polite man who described to me how he tried to hang himself from a lamppost in Hampstead Square on his last binge. "That is what booze does to me," he said.

The Cameron-style critics say alcoholics need to take personal responsibility. But they are glib about what they are asking. You can't tell teenagers not to drink on the off chance a disastrous genetic switch in their brains might be activated. Nor can you tell alcoholics to stop drinking or lose their benefits, as the government is considering, because they probably won't do it. Nobody knows why a small number of alcoholics are able to get better and stay better; most alcoholics die of the disease. I am lucky - so far - but I am in a minority. Recovery, for me, seems to be a weird combination of luck, timing and the right help at the right time. It is not due primarily to personal willpower, as these critics seem to suggest. I wish it were.

· Tracey Emin - the artist who named her pet turtle Tracey Emin because she couldn't think of any other name - needs a cuddle. Does the turtle need a cuddle too? If so, I have a solution. Tracey and Tracey, come with me to a Cuddle Party.

Cuddle Parties are a beaming, hugging import from America. It's simple: a group of strangers go and lie on the floor of a room and cuddle each other. I went to one last year.

The Cuddle Room was furnished with a leopard-skin rug and a sign on the wall that read I Cuddle Ergo I Am. There were pictures of specific hugs: the A-frame hug ("a classic. Rather formal") and the Top of the Head Hug ("firm and strength-giving"). There was a Certified Cuddle Party Facilitator and a group of dazzling metropolitans lying on the floor in brand-new pyjamas, stroking each other.

I had to sign a Cuddle Contract - "I will not sue Cuddle Party Ltd if something bad happens" - and read the Cuddle Manifesto - "We need to get in touch with touch!" Then came the Cuddle Rules: pyjamas stay on; you don't have to cuddle anyone; a yes is mandatory before proceeding; tears and laughter are both welcome. So I rolled in, nervously touched a few people and played with a man's head. They wittered about how happy they were to be intimate with strangers, à la Blanche DuBois. We got on all fours and impersonated cows, crying "Moo!" Then we did a Puppy Pile-Up, which I think is a kind of lasagne, made with humans. It made me feel quite relaxed actually - warm, drowsy and giggly. And Tracey, if you come along, you can kidnap us at gunpoint, force us to cuddle for months and enter us for the Turner prize. You'll probably win.

· Michele Hanson is away.

· This week Tanya watched Till We Meet Again, a 1989 TV miniseries, with Hugh Grant as Count Bruno de Lancel, a champagne magnate and Nazi collaborator: "It was nearly as awful as when he tried to play Chopin." She visited the National Gallery: "I hate Monet. I don't know why." She read Nemesis by Peter Evans: "Was Bobby Kennedy murdered by Aristotle Onassis? Who knew?"