To think that addiction is a disease?

[feryon98]

Was having a discussion with a few coworkers about this and it seems to offend them when people claimed addiction is a disease and they said people with actual diseases don't have a choice.

Yes, addiction it's self inflicted but there are many diseases which are caused by an initial choice (e.g Eating unhealthy can cause Type II diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure,).

.As a surveyor of the war in Bosnia, I have seen things that I wish no one would ever see or experience, and I turned to alcohol to be able to sleep, to stop the noices, to stop remembering the pain, children killed. Yes, it's my choice to choose alcohol when the therapist couldn't help. I wish I had never become this person but it's hard to stop drinking as it's my sedative.

Sorry for what you've experienced but your post is typical of what an addict would say. There's always a reason, it's never their fault. I imagine every person who has been in a war zone has experienced horrors but they don't all become alcoholics.

You need to go to AA, resume therapy and stop drinking. What do your family think, are they suffering because of your actions?

I agree with you, but the sadness is so deep. My family is all gone and that's why I drink. Unfortunately, I'm an addict as I can't deal with my loss. I wish things played out differently. People just don't understand that this wasn't my choice

Well, as i say I am sorry for what you've experienced and your ongoing struggles but with help you can address your drinking. Please don't give up

@Hope09071981

I am also sorry for what you have been through - it’s beyond the imagination for those of us who have never lived in a war zone.
However, as Gloriia says, drinking alcoholically will not help your problems and will bring a whole lot more.
Please try an AA meeting - there you will find people who understand about alcoholism.

I think part of the reason people don't think of addiction as a disease is because the model of a disease is you fall ill, you receive treatment, you recover.

But with addiction the treatment is you avoid doing something that is harmful to you; and people think of the inability to do that as a character flaw.

The reason you don't do it all day everyday is because you don't have a voice inside your head telling you to have "one more" constantly until you finally give in, then it tells you "just one more" ad nauseum. It's a very STRONG compulsion, people without addictions don't have that else they'd be addicts too. The only way to control it is to just never do it again and even that's a struggle everyday. Not surprisingly most addicts want to partake in their addiction to some degree as they enjoy it, it's probably why so many remain addicts because they think the next time they will be able to control it.

Interesting question.
Addictive behaviour is linked with dopamine overload in the modern world.
Probably most of us are addicted to something (how many times have you been on MN today???) but some addictions (alcohol, smoking, food, illegal substances) cause physical illnesses.
I recommend a very interesting podcast I listen to the other week from The Diary of a CEO: Dopamine Expert with Dr Anna Lembke

I don't consider it an addiction. However it is a very valid affliction. While some addicts may have become so without any underlying issue. I believe the vast majority have traumatic or mental health issues in their past that have brought addiction into their lives.

We do need far better mental health support, and if that means legalising some drugs which are supplied on the NHS then so be it. Far better to spend the money dealing direct with the issue than putting money into the hands of criminals.

Your last sentence is pretty much spot on, except for addiction brain it's your subconscious clinging onto the notion that smoking is cool/a reward/soothing or is always there for you (rather like food for the emotional eater).

I was a happy smoker for 48 years, a failed giver-upper for two years and smoke free since August (17th to be precise!). It is possible. And easy.

@Eyesopenwideawake Yes, youre right re subconscious. And congratulations! Genuinely!

It's definitely a public health issue and when you treat it like that it's easier to apply public health policies. Rather than focus on individual responsibility or see it as moral failing. Moral failing IMHO may be the outcome but its too simplistic to say its the cause. Environment has a big impact.

You need to make quitting smoking THE PROJECT, rather than the goal.

Yes of course you want to be a non smoker but often we don't know why other than we know it's probably a good idea. The why comes later.

Instead just set a middle distance deadline. I don't know how old you are but here's some info. If you smoke after age 35 you are storing up health problems. So 35 is a good deadline. Or just pick 3 years time. It doesn't matter.

Then start. Because, it will take that long of quitting and failing to succeed in quitting.

All the thoughts around it are just fluff and can be ignored. Every thought about why you can't- experiment with thinking the opposite. Because thoughts are just thoughts. They do become reality if you repeat and repeat them though.

That's why I like Allan Cars book, it sort of reverse brain washes you. It got me into the realisation that I was just telling myself I can't...in reality nicotine has left the system in 48 hours and the rest is just habit and residual brain pathways.

'Probably most of us are addicted to something (how many times have you been on MN today???) but some addictions (alcohol, smoking, food, illegal substances) cause physical illnesses.'

I don't think most of us are addicted to anything at all. Everyone uses social media, going on X or Facebook or indeed mn is not in any way shape or form an addiction.

Addictions cause damage to everyone. The addict, their poor friends and long suffering family. However it is becoming so medicalised these days enabling people with 'they can't help it it is a diseasse' theories. Alcoholics, and overeaters all say the say thing, it isn't their fault. Once you take the first step and accept responsibility that is when you can plan how to change your behaviour.

@podthedog Thanks for the advice but I've already stopped as per my post. It took exactly two 20 minute sessions (plus a 10 minute follow up 2 weeks later) with my friend and mentor Tim Box. Job done!

I don't think it's a disease but a habit forming behaviour with lots of layers of issues underneath.

I have had many bad addictive behaviours that I had been unable to stop for decades (smoking, weed, junk food) and it was a horrendous time when I eventually stopped those things, smoking took years to quit. I never fell into full blown alcoholic but I still cannot give up my weekend drinks.

There are many reasons why I started those bad behaviours and it was hell stopping it but now I can't understand why I "chose" to do them.

@Gloriia if you have the chance to listen to the podcast I mentioned, the way the guest explains how people form addictive behaviours and what is classed as such is very interesting.
Alcoholism, habitual drug usage, porn etc are the extreme and more harmful examples. But addiction is not limited to these activities and can include more benign, less harmful everyday occupations. Based on the same original principle about the way our brains function.

I think the issue I have with the alcoholism-as-a-disease viewpoint is that so many of the addicts that I know have used it as a total abdication of all responsibility for their choices and behaviours.

This is what I struggle with as well. As the daughter of an alcoholic and the ex wife of another.

Addiction can be a disease and also at the same time very selfish. Addicts are selfish. I know some people have a genetic disposition. I know that it can be hard, to the point of near impossibility, to stop. But there is at some level of act of will involved with addiction. There's something in the addict which is over-riding the rational knowledge that it's going to cause pain to everyone around you.

And there's a very deep selfishness in continuing to do something, again and again and again, when you know it harms you and harms your loved ones. At some level an addict is saying: "my right to kill myself and ruin your life is more important than your right to be free from the chaos and the sadness and the worry". And I can't get past that, however much people tell me it's a disease.

All addiction programs that I have come across require you to take responsibility for your use of whatever it is and to take responsibility for managing your way out of the addiction. I know of no other condition or illness that it is possible to get rid of in such a way. If only we could.

Certainly, there is no other condition or illness that requires you to apologise to other people, as you do in addiction programs.

Therefore, I do not accept that addiction is a disease.

It is a brain disease in terms of how alcohol or whatever the substance has high jacked the brain.
All I can say is I am so glad I am not an addict of drugs or alcohol. Judge all you want but none of us know if we would be able to choose not to give in to our own brain screaming at us.

In my experience - addiction becomes a disease, in so much as something that a person has no choice or control over.
I didn't believe this for years with my alcoholic mother. It killed me that she was making these choices consciously, or so I thought. Eventually, and towards the end, during a particularly emotional time, I literally saw it in her eyes. I can picture so clearly and can cry now remembering. They were screaming 'help me' whilst she was saying nothing.
Again, I believed people made choices. I hated addicts for their selfishness. Some people are physically and mentally weaker than others. They are able to fight and recover. Some are not and do not.

My mother was an alcoholic. She came from a safe and decent background yet always made poor choices. She had 3 kids with abusive men and drank herself in to oblivion as a way to cope with his abusive ways and left us to deal with the aftermath. Low and behold then she died when I was barely in my 20’s because of course she smoked too which ultimately finished her off 🙄

We had a shit childhood because of her drinking and she made no effort to try and stop and I won’t ever forgive that. The older I get and the older my children get the more angry I get at her choices. Oh the irony, she had the idyllic start in life and gave us a shit one. No one will convince me to feel bad for her or it to say she didn’t have a choice as that’s my thoughts and feelings towards her. She chose alcohol over us and I would never do that.

The people who become addicted to alcohol that I do feel sorry for are those who suffer the most horrific pain, such as losing a child or perhaps those who have had unimaginable childhoods
and severe trauma. Most people don’t fit in to that category.

Most people never thankfully have to understand alcoholism one minute you are perfectly normal having a few drinks with friends the next you find you cannot stop. To make it worse you are probably the last person to see it, then hopefully you can find a way out. You can’t see it on a medical examination but like other conditions like depression and anorexia it is very real to the sufferers.

I am sorry you experienced a difficult childhood. I do however believe mental health difficulties can and certainly do exist outside of those factors; it is not always as easy as saying it is a simple choice. It can stem from many contributors, eg: undiagnosed conditions, untreated illnesses, untold trauma etc. We only know of people what they tell us.