Drug Addiction Is Not A Disease Essay

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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 …show more content…

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

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