This seems to be one of the MOST controversial topics of discussion amongst the community of providers of treatment, those who study addiction and of current and rehabilitated addicts.
As disease:
http://www.medical-online.com/addict.htm
Not disease:
http://www.american-partisan.com/cols/2001/mercer/qtr1/print/0313.htm
Obviously there seems to be no middle ground it’s that devisive a topic.
I’d be very interested in hearing what this community has to say on the subject.
In dealing with some aspects of addiction in the past myself I feel that it is indeed a disease but more along the lines of a mental health issue which can then after time has more traditional physical manifestations.
On the other hand I’ve seen perfectly healthy folks make the “Bad choices” and then go into the physical manifestations of disease, whereas if they merely avoided the toxic substances would have continued to be healthy.
What do you all think?
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I was always under the impression that the issue of classifying drug addiction as a disease had a lot to do with the funding available to it if it managed to get classification as a disease. ie. the issue was a bureacratic one?
Sounds like a lot of people have a big emotional investment in this one so I might be off base there.
Political football
I don’t think there is any question Rob that politics is a major factor when it comes to things like govenment sponsored programs and the like. Probably more so in the past than now though. I’ll qualify that a bit. In the last decade or so there has been lots of health care reform in the US (That’s what I know best) and insurance companies have very much changed the nature of the way health care works now. There is much more of a focus on prevention so the insurance companies would rather focus earlier rather than later, crime from drugs costs them, injuries from DUI etc.
The result is insurance co’s and medical facilities are working closer together, meaning both parties look at it as a health problem, mental and physical. What I have noticed is that it seems to be more moral entities (Church sponsored, and schools too) that tend to view addiction more in terms of good bad.
I guess when I really think about it, governments muddy the water more than anyone else, as commonly it seems like they’ll take both sides.
Yup
I guess it depends which way the political wind is blowing at the time. When a few thousand votes can deliver you power, are the lives of a few addicts really worth that much?
Harsh, but probably closer to reality than we hope.
Unfortunately more often
Unfortunately more often than not politicians view this in the short term as opposed to the long term, that’s one of the reasons I believe that addiction and all the problems that come with it have become as manifest in comtemporary society as they have.
It’s the view of “What benefits me now?” as opposed to the implications later.
Keep them white wimmin outta the yella places……
Bah….It’s obviously both……unfortunately, the people who wanna characterize it as “bad choices” tend to be playing “political football” to use Steve’s term, and have never used drugs themselves.
I’m not sure that insurance companies really give a shit though, other than to ram-rod through drug-testing for every moderate-to-major sized company.
Interestingly, drug laws in the US started out as food laws, and a way to keep white women out of Chinese opium dens in San Fran.
Look it up, you’ll be shocked.
Interesting.
Never heard that about the drug laws.
And yes that is an extremely good point about the people who tend to side on the “Bad choices” side of things.
There absolutely is a component of both disease and bad descision making. I mean I guess that sounds wishy washy but coming from a “personal” stand point my experience has been anything but black and white.
I’ll be blogging on those points at a later date.
disease or choice
I think its a bit of both. I use the analogy that although a person may not choose to be a diabetic or have high blood pressure or be bipolar or have a propensity for addictive behavior they do have a choice to use the tools available to manage the disease – everything from lifestyle choices to using medical modalities. Granted some diseases have more effective and easier tools to use than others, but given the consequences that can result from not taking responsibility for a one’s disease usually results in chaos and added societal expenses for others. Not cool. So given that a particular individual gets dealt a particular set of “life cards” they then can make some choices about how they play those cards. Its a personal responsibility thing….sometimes sad, sometimes disappointing but empowering in the end….