The disease model explains why willpower alone rarely overcomes addiction. While initial substance use may be voluntary, the resulting brain changes create a state where continued use becomes ...

Understanding addiction as a disease helps counter these harmful historical narratives. The impact of this historical context extends beyond individual families to affect entire communities.

is a startling departure from the usual tourism posters and welcome banners: “Addiction is not a choice. It’s a disease that can happen to anyone.” The statement is part of a public service ...

Is addiction a disease? Most people think, "yes." The idea has become ingrained in the minds of media, courts, treatment facilities, and addicts. It's also a stigma. A debatable concept is that if ...

I thought addiction was an extreme mental illness — a “disease,” as I learned in medical school and later, in rehab. I understood addiction as a damaged condition that neatly divided me from ...

Femke Buisman-Pijlman I agree a single-factor theory is not helpful to explain addiction behaviour. Many diseases are similar in this, having a large number of risk and contributing factors.

The disease model doesn’t account very well for people who use drugs but aren’t dependent (about 90% of people who use alcohol or other drugs), or people who use drugs and have problems other than ...

At a debate in December Bernie Sanders described addiction as a “disease, not a criminal activity.” And Hillary Clinton has laid out a plan on her website on how to fight the epidemic.

For many decades, it's been widely accepted that alcoholism (or addiction) is a disease. The "disease concept" is taught in addiction training programs and to patients in treatment programs.

Addiction has been moralized, medicalized, politicized, and criminalized. And, of course, many of us are addicts, have been addicts or have been close to addicts. Addiction runs very hot as a theme.

A full-scale campaign is under way to change the public perception of drug addiction, from a moral failing to a brain disease. Last spring, HBO aired an ambitious series that touted addiction as a ...