My moral struggle with the term "Addiction" is not so much related to the research behind it, but the personal experiences in front of me. Addiction ran heavily through my family line, and in the small town I grew up in. As a child, I never understood it; it's one of those things your parents try to shelter from you. I always assumed that you could spot a drug user or alcoholic from a mile away--someone that was dirty, spending most of their daylight hours figuring out where to sleep that night, little ability to speak. What I failed to acknowledge in my youth was that I walked closely to addiction most of my life, and addiction itself was watching over me too.
I harbor a morbid fascination with different forms of addiction and the drugs that fuel the fire. I love research on specific drugs, the way serotonin or dopamine is released as part of the brain's reward system is incredulous and the drug users themselves grasp my attention as well.
For anyone with any drug related experience--be it drug use, research or street smarts--you understand that addiction is labeled as a disease. Studies have determined it to be a disease because it alters chemicals within the brain. The brain changes the way it operates to maintain the reward system, it will accept pain as long as it is rewarded eventually.
This isn't about the brain's reward circuit though and it's not centered around drugs itself. Addiction is defined as a disease and the term disease comes with immediate negative connotation. Society pities addicts because they've altered their brain chemicals "unwillingly", but I don't pity them as much as most people. Addicts are created in a variety of ways, and I understand that quitting is beyond those of us that are not addicted, but addicts also need to want to seek the help they need if they truly want it. Otherwise, we're forcing them into a circumstance they want no part of and that only makes the situation more difficult.
Keep in mind this is clearly opinionated, but within decent reasoning. Of course it is our job to steer loved ones into the right direction because their brain no longer fathoms right and wrong in the way that we do daily. However, if it were a disease--as research and science deems it to be--wouldn't an addict seek help? I cannot dispute research, but morally I cannot agree that addiction is a disease because I believe we give addicts a cop out (just like criminals use mental illness to lessen their sentences). In allowing them to claim that they are disease-ridden, we allow them a reason to deny responsibility. Removing that responsibility gives an addict more time to fuel their addiction, and then it becomes anyone else's responsibility to pull them out of the hole they dug. There are handfuls of parents out there in the abyss that have been handed over blame when dealing with addicted children, or there are parents that willingly take the blame and beg to know where they went wrong.
Perhaps I'm cynical about the situation because I've seen far too many people I care about suffer, whether it be from addiction or at the hands of an addict. So what's the answer? Where is the middle ground where responsibility is shared? It's not our fault when someone becomes addicted. Scientifically, I believe that the alteration of the brain makes quitting a difficult process, even gambling addicts twitch for the adrenaline. Morally I do not believe that addiction cannot stand classified the same way that cancer is, or schizophrenia; even diabetes is a disease.
It winds down to that short list of diseases above, and the many more like them, those have a starting agent--an agent that infects the body without permission. In quite the opposite manner, we welcome whatever substance we become addicted to into our minds and bodies each and every single time. A diabetic doesn't want to prick his finger every day, but he has to. I've never met a cancer patient that sought out chemotherapy because it made them feel tingly with the right dose; it's done to save their lives. It's a matter of perspective and that perspective has been adjusted so that society would shame addicts less in hopes that they would seek help more easily. Addicts have triggers, things that push them to feed the addiction for the satisfaction of the reward system; a pathological disease attacks constantly. There is no trigger, the pathogen is always at war with the body.
The disease model of addiction makes the problem worse. In allowing the addict to believe that it is not their fault, because it's the brain's fault, we hinder the treatment process. There sparks an idea that the addict needs medicine, that their treatment will be solved medicinally, instead of giving the addict room to better understand their brain and its triggers. Addicts are their own problem, but we are the forces standing in their way because the brain's processes allude us more than anything to this day. Aside from hindering the addict, we impede our own ability to further understand addiction as it is. We are letting addiction collect dust on the shelf as it consumes the nation.
