Addiction Brain Disease

This article is about “should addiction to drugs be a labeled a brain disease?” The author starts out talking about the different theories as to why some individuals become addicted to alcohol or other drugs. Historically, drug and alcohol dependency has been viewed as either a disease or a moral failing. The view that this addiction to drugs and alcohol are righteous failings maintains that such abusing of drugs is voluntary of what the person wants to do. People choose to immoderate in such ways that they begin to suffer everyday life for themselves and others. American history is marked by repeated and failed government efforts to control this abuse by elimination g drug and alcohol use with legal sanctions, such as the enactment of Prohibition in the late 1920s and the punishment of alcoholics and drug users via jail sentences and fines. However, there seem to be several contradictions to this behavioral model of
It is not totally clear that addiction is voluntary behavior. And from a historical perspective, punishing alcoholics and drug addicts has been ineffective. In the United States today, the primary theory for understanding the causes of addiction is the disease model rather than the moral model. Borrowing from the modern mental health movement, addiction as a disease has been promoted b mental health advocates who tried to change the public’s perception of severe mental illness. Diseases like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were defined as the result of brain abnormalities rather than environmental factors or poor parenting. Likewise, addiction was not a moral weakness but a brain disorder that could be treated. In the Yes article, the truth is that we will make progress in dealing with drug issues only when our national discourse and our strategies are as complex and comprehensive as the problem itself. A core concept that has been evolving with scientific advances