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Do You Believe Addiction is a Disease, Or... [POLL!]

Addiction is...

  • Total voters
    365
I think a lot of people have seen addicts proclaim freedom from responsibility for their actions because they "have a disease" and this leaves a bad taste in people's mouth and they repel from the notion.

I don't personally believe if you call addiction a disease that it means people are no longer responsible for their actions. Too much effort goes into people trying to blame addicts for their addiction or addicts trying to blame someone or something else for it. I think addiction is too complex and subjective to be explained (at least universally) in such terms.

In the nomenclature of our societies, it fits the criteria for a disease so I voted yes in the poll but I think a bigger problem is the medicalization of the human experience. Shyness or introversion has become 'social anxiety' for example.

I think we are missing the point arguing over whether addiction is a disease or not or who deserves how much blame when we could be looking at the bigger picture of what is wrong with our societies that drive so many people to want to use drugs. The Rat Park studies showed very effectively that when animals have their needs met, drugs get in the way and it's only when animals are locked in cages or deprived of what they need or desire that they look to treat the distress that causes with drugs.

The author of the rat park studies recently wrote a book on the subject, The Globalisation of Addiction. -

This book argues that the cause of this failure to control addiction is that the conventional wisdom of the 19th and 20th centuries focused too single-mindedly on the afflicted individual addict. Although addiction obviously manifests itself in individual cases, its prevalence differs dramatically between societies. For example, it can be quite rare in a society for centuries, and then become common when a tribal culture is destroyed or a highly developed civilization collapses. When addiction becomes commonplace in a society, people become addicted not only to alcohol and drugs, but to a thousand other destructive pursuits: money, power, dysfunctional relationships, or video games. A social perspective on addiction does not deny individual differences in vulnerability to addiction, but it removes them from the foreground of attention, because social determinants are more powerful. This book shows that the social circumstances that spread addiction in a conquered tribe or a falling civilisation are also built into today's globalizing free-market society. A free-market society is magnificently productive, but it subjects people to irresistible pressures towards individualism and competition, tearing rich and poor alike from the close social and spiritual ties that normally constitute human life. People adapt to their dislocation by finding the best substitutes for a sustaining social and spiritual life that they can, and addiction serves this function all too well.
 
Cane2theLeft said:
that when animals have their needs met, drugs get in the way and it's only when animals are locked in cages or deprived of what they need or desire that they look to treat the distress
Click to expand...

^^seemed worthy of repetition..
and also highly relevant to my today.

thanks, cane.
 
I think its all gotta do with willpower. Sure if yer addicted its a hell of alotta harder to quit but if you think about it if you set yer mind you rreally can quit.

From experience though no one ever quits. If you like something it don't matter if its 10 yrs down the road chances are your gonna do the drug again. I'm not sayin relapse just that there's a good chance ppl are gonna do it again.

Disease argument don't make sense esp for alcoholism. Even though alc is a drug it takes a much longer time to get dependant on that than other drugs. If yer gettn wasted multiple times a week and don't have the willpower to say ima be sober today than your not mentally ill yer just weak
 
"Once an addict, always an addict".

Being someone who has been through drug addiction, still to this day (to a certain extent, no longer physically dependent on anything, woohoo!) I gotta say this saying resonates with me. I went through an Opiate addiction when I was 18 years old, for almost two full years I was a daily abuser. Even to this day, I crave and crave alterations to my perception and bodies chemistry so that I feel "High" and mighty. I am a god among men who's ego and selfish desire leads him to constantly abuse substances in moderation (Abuse in moderation? Ha!)

I strongly believe a person can overcome addiction on their own and never look back. I also believe it is the most difficult road one can face. Once an addict, always an addict? Definitely not the case for everyone, but for most? Oh yeah. Once you achieve a high like no other there is no forgetting it.
 
Ha ha ha, Mikeman, so true! I cannot bear those horrible 12 step meetings with everyone around me desperately sucking down coffee and cigarettes.
 
I think addiction is defined poorly in general.

I understand what physical addiction is (becoming sick from not using opiates, cocaine, alcohol, etc when you've been using them daily for a long period of time).

However, I think what people would define as mental addiction is not understood very well. At least in my opinion, you aren't truly addicted to something unless you have some desire to stop doing that thing. I've made this point in BL before to quite a bit of criticism, but I'll try to elaborate.

For example, I smoke about 2 packs of cigarettes a week on average. I've had a maybe 5 or so weeks without cigarettes in the past 2 years, but otherwise that's a pretty standard trend for me. Some people will say that I'm addicted to cigarettes because I smoke 40 of them a week. I would say that I smoke 40 cigarettes a week out of habit. Addiction implies that I would have difficulty in trying to stop smoking 2 packs a week. That may be true; I may have difficulty if I tried to stop smoking 2 packs a week. But if I'm not trying to quit smoking, how is the difficulty of me quitting relevant? You could say that most cigarette smokers have a hard time quitting, so therefore I would also have a hard time quitting if I chose to do so. But that is not a certainty. Maybe I'll decide I want to quit cigarettes, but won't be able to because I am addicted, or maybe I'll quit them with little or no difficulty if I choose to do so. In the present, that is not relevant, because I don't want to quit smoking cigarettes.

So take heroin for example; a much more serious drug. I just started using heroin this year and have personally gone through about 2 grams (insufflated). The reason why I've done so little is because I only obtain my H through the dark web. I have no interest in seeking out a heroin dealer in person, and none of my friends use heroin besides me. I'll admit that there are times when I long for it, but I don't get it very often simply because of the price and difficulty in obtaining it (I'm a college student with an anorexic wallet, and the money conversion is quite an ordeal). So I only end up getting heroin when I have extra cash lying around, and the vendors I know, be they in the USA, NL, Thailand or where ever, have high quality product to sell.

If I had a friend or someone I knew who sold good quality stamps for $10-$20, then yeah, I might end up addicted to H and crash and burn. But I haven't because I don't know anyone like that, and don't have any intention of seeking out anyone like that.

So maybe I'm a unique case, but personally, I doubt it. I don't think I'm that special. I can't say for sure if addiction is a disease or not (I think it best if it's treated as one, for the good of the people). To me, however, a disease should only depend on the physical body of the person afflicted, and the pathogen or substance that is causing the affliction itself. Because there are so many other factors (availability, perception), what people call drug addiction does not seem to fit into that category.
 
I don't think it is because I disagree with the notion that we're powerless over addiction. It's extremely difficult to overcome but it's not impossibe. So we're not powerless. Whereas you can't will yourself out of a physical illness, as far as I know.
 
A disease? You mean like smallpox or influenza?

Seems more like a behavioral trait, sociological response to a social environment, or plain ole' habit like anything else. Television, shopping, food.

Diseases are actual organisms that feed off your body compromising it's immune defenses causing a host of side effects which we call 'sick.'

Withdrawal symptoms are merely neurons freaking out when a drug the brain has become accustomed to is suddenly withdrawn or drastically reduced.

So I'm saying no.
 
Thou said:
A disease? You mean like smallpox or influenza?

Seems more like a behavioral trait, sociological response to a social environment, or plain ole' habit like anything else. Television, shopping, food.

Diseases are actual organisms that feed off your body compromising it's immune defenses causing a host of side effects which we call 'sick.'

Withdrawal symptoms are merely neurons freaking out when a drug the brain has become accustomed to is suddenly withdrawn or drastically reduced.

So I'm saying no.
Click to expand...

This actually makes sense. I have tried "more addictive" drugs like meth, ice, crack, speed etc many MANY times, and am not an addict. But I know a few people who are addicts, and have said that the first time they tried whatever drug it is that they are addicted to, that they KNEW they would never get off it. I do believe in what some people would call "addictive personalities"

But having said that, is it a medical condition of the brain that maybe causes this addiction? Could go either way really...
 
i'm kind of torn on this one. as NOW i can quit using opiates (what i would be considered addicted to, if anything) whenever i need to/have no other choice, and depending on how much i've been using i get bad/moderate withdrawals but i get over it and can resist doing more opiates to get rid of the symptoms.

with that said, AT ONE POINT IN MY LIFE i was a degenerate stealer and drug user; any time i was near drugs i either had to buy them or get them somehow. i felt like i had a disease at that point but i guess i've overcome it. when you're deep in the drugs it grabs a hold of your mind just like a mental disease in opinion. note however, i have never personally experienced any mental illness so i can't directly compare, this is purely based on readings and research.
 
Addiction is a state in which concrete persons neurotransmitters and hormones aren't at their normal levels and it simply go away when one abstains from a drug. If someone can abstain and not feel bad psychologically or physically it's not an addiction yet. Also, various receptors may be depleted, not to mention changes in brain, so it's a physical harm, it was caused by drug use so it's part of addiction symptoms. It is a disease.

Of course that doesn't mean there can't be some characteristics of one's personality making that person prone to getting addicted, e.g. being prone to seek dissociation and be ready to use drugs to achieve that. They can be loosely called as "addictive personality" but I think it's much more complicated and such tendency is present along with other characteristics and this is a symptom of some broader type of personality disorder.
 
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