Drug Addiction Is Not A Disease Essay

Addiction is defined as a chronic relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences. The best argument against calling addiction a disease states that addicts make the choice to use drugs and that their inability to stop is simply immature and irresponsible behavior. From the articles that I have researched I am going to discuss whether or not drug addiction is a disease or if it is just a choice. I will analyze some key points on the definition of disease as well as choice and hopefully show some evidence to support my theories of drug addiction being a disease or a choice.

In a true disease, some part of the body is in a state of abnormal physiological functioning, and this causes the undesirable symptoms. When doctors use the Disease Model of Illness to think about a disease, they think of a specific physical defect in some organ or

physiologic system of the body. For example, cancer is a well-known disease which would be classed as an abnormality which it some cases medical treatment may be the only helpful way. A big part of our difficulty in calling addiction a “disease” stems from the fact that no one could ever find the defect in the brain that caused addiction. Addiction is a defect in the hedonic system, or the system that perceives pleasure, which is deep in the part of the brain that handles basic survival. Because of this defect, the addict unconsciously thinks of the drug as life itself.
While it is true that the addict may have a choice in whether or not to use drugs, they do not have the choice over whether or not to crave.

If craving gets bad enough, even the strongest-willed, and most responsible person will return to using drugs. No brain can ignore that survival imperative. One of the big reasons we have difficulty calling addiction a disease is our inability to grasp the true nature of craving. Choices do not happen without a brain it is the mechanism of choice. The quality of a person’s choices depends on the health of that mechanism. Therefore we may wish that a person’s choices were free in all aspects, it is simply a fact that an addicted person’s failures in the range of choice are the product of a brain that has become greatly compromised and thus makes it easy to see when doctors scan their brains. However once addiction takes hold, there is greatly declined capacity, on one’s own, to stop using. This is why psychiatry recognizes addiction as a disease of the brain, and why professional intervention is needed to treat it in most

instances.

So in saying that statistics in the US show that the number of people that were arrested in 2012 nonviolent drug charges are 1.55 million, and the number of people arrested for a marijuana law violation in 2012: 749,825, and the number of those charged with marijuana law violations who were arrested for possession only are 658,231 (88 percent), and more drastically the number of Americans incarcerated in 2012 in federal, state and local prisons and jails: 2,228,400 or 1 in every 108 adults