a paper was published on this in november last year. This is what they had to say about why addiction is LIKE a disease, but probably not actually one.
“Calling addiction a disease is accurate in many ways. It explains the helplessness addicts feel: they are in the grip of a disease, and so they can’t get better by themselves. It also helps alleviate guilt, shame, and blame, and it gets people on track to seek treatment. Moreover, addiction is indeed like a disease.
What it doesn’t explain is spontaneous recovery. True, you get spontaneous recovery with medical diseases…but not very often, especially with serious ones. Yet many if not most addicts get better by themselves, without medically prescribed treatment, without going to AA”
I believe that there could be more to it than this, because the brain is incredibly complex, and we dont yet understand how it works in every situation. I think it is possible that neurobiologists may one day be able to prove addiction is a disease just as much as mental illness is a disease which affects the mind and can be treated successfully without medication for many sufferers.
a paper was published on this in november last year. This is what they had to say about why addiction is LIKE a disease, but probably not actually one.
“Calling addiction a disease is accurate in many ways. It explains the helplessness addicts feel: they are in the grip of a disease, and so they can’t get better by themselves. It also helps alleviate guilt, shame, and blame, and it gets people on track to seek treatment. Moreover, addiction is indeed like a disease.
What it doesn’t explain is spontaneous recovery. True, you get spontaneous recovery with medical diseases…but not very often, especially with serious ones. Yet many if not most addicts get better by themselves, without medically prescribed treatment, without going to AA”
I believe that there could be more to it than this, because the brain is incredibly complex, and we dont yet understand how it works in every situation. I think it is possible that neurobiologists may one day be able to prove addiction is a disease just as much as mental illness is a disease which affects the mind and can be treated successfully without medication for many sufferers.
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