A heated debate often arises regarding addiction. The debate often centers around two opinions regarding addiction. One opinion views addiction as a disease, while the other opinion views addiction as a choice.
Is Addiction a Choice?
Addiction can be very devastating on individuals and families, often destroying them and significantly hurting friend and family relationships. This is true whether you are the one going through addition or you are a close friend or family member of a person with an addiction.
A recent paper that was published has revealed that addiction clearly does not meet the requirements of a disease.
The paper, published in CMAJ, explained addiction and the false assumption that it is a disease in great detail. The paper explains that addiction begins with a choice, a choice of whether or not you will consume a substance. Once you choose to take the drug in front of you, you are establishing a prison for yourself.
The paper also mentions that addiction could be labeled a self-inflicted mental illness because addiction does not meet the proper requirements for a disease. More specifically, the requirement for a disease is the existence of a primary measurable deviation from physiologic or anatomical norm. Addiction is acquired by the individual and cannot be transmitted and is not contagious. Additionally, addiction is not autoimmune, hereditary, degenerative, or traumatic.
Treatment of addiction consists simply of stopping the behavior, while true diseases get worse if left untreated. A patient with cancer will not be cured if locked in a cell with no treatment. An alcoholic, if locked in a cell, will be cured instantly.
Often, addiction seems to be a response to another condition such as depression and other problems associated with coping with the world.
This is not to say addiction should not be treated or taken less seriously, but rather that addiction is a social problem that requires interventions on a social level. It is unfair to label addiction as a disease. If people with cancer want to get free of the disease they cannot just detox cancer into nonexistence. Addiction, while difficult, can be overcome.
