http://mindhacks.com/2007/07/27/junkies-and-victims-addiction-and-the-disease-debate/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:54:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2007/07/27/junkies-and-victims-addiction-and-the-disease-debate/#comment-7232 Fri, 27 Jul 2007 20:04:08 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/junkies-and-victims-addiction-and-the-disease-debate/#comment-7232 An interesting discussion (including popkes’ comment). What is important is that the debate is often framed around the question of whether “addiction” is or is not ‚Äúa disease.‚Äù That is the wrong framework.
We should be investigating addictions as complex, non-discrete phenomena varying from person-to-person. The idea of treating the viewing of pornography, over-spending, gambling, heroin addiction, alcohol addiction, meth addiction, overeating and even so-called “love addiction” as a single ‚Äúdisease‚Äù with different surface manifestations has largely been driven by the self-help movement and a treatment industry that has grown up around this movement. An extraordinary number of addicts from these programs have gone on to earn ‚Äúcounseling‚Äù credentials and they have had excessive influence on conceptualization and treatment paradigms. Within the self-help movement and the treatment industry, there has been a strong tendency to ignore both the findings of researchers and legitimate challenges to simplistic, faulty conceptualizations.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2007/07/27/junkies-and-victims-addiction-and-the-disease-debate/#comment-7231 Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:37:57 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/junkies-and-victims-addiction-and-the-disease-debate/#comment-7231 This is interesting information. However, referring to addicts as a single homogenous group or addiction as a single homogenous condition has significant problems.
The brain has every bit as much variation as any other organ and we should expect a wide range of responses to addictive drugs just like we would expect people to have a wide range of responses to exercise, having children or learning how to ride a bicycle.
Some addicts have more ability to kick the habit than others. Some have more freedom of choice than others. The drug has more effect on some addicts than others. To say “addiction, perhaps more than many other disorders, is amenable to personal choice” is likely true for some subset of the population of addicts and just as likely untrue for some other subset. This fact should be acknowledged and brought into the conversation. Any “one size fits all” policy for addiction will fail just like a “one size fits all” approach would fail for any other medical condition.

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