Addiction is a disease. While this is scientific fact, not everyone seems to agree.
This is the post I made about addiction:
And this is a comment that I received:
There are quite a few points that I would like to address, here. First of all, as stated earlier, addiction is a disease. Medically, any deviation from a state of health is a disease. This was discussed in my MBI 161 college course, Elementary Medical Microbiology. This statement alone shuts down this entire comment. However, just to be clear, I want to discuss a few more points.
The commenter states, "Sorry 3 the CDC forcing and or coaxing you to pump poisons into children's and adult systems that don't even kill the cold or the flu..." The commenter's English was very hard to understand throughout the entirety of the comment, but what I got from that statement was that the commenter is an anti-vaxxer and opposes vaccinations, calling them "poisons." The commenter clearly does not know a thing about medical science, but claims that addiction is not a disease and continues to judge people who are addicted to substances.
He is right about one thing, and that is that the vaccine doesn't kill the cold or the flu. Instead, the vaccine trains and teaches our own immune systems to kill the target virus or bacteria. However, that was the only correct statement that he wrote throughout the entire comment. Vaccines are NOT poisons. It is because of vaccines that we have been able to eradicate smallpox and rinderpest. I don't know about you guys, but I would much rather suffer through a vaccine than through a disease like smallpox, a disease that used to kill millions.
Luckily, this commenter did not succeed in getting my panties in a "not". He DID succeed in making himself look like a dunce. According to the Center On Addiction, "Addiction is a complex disease of the brain and body that involves compulsive use of one or more substances despite serious health and social consequences. Addiction disrupts regions of the brain that are responsible for reward, motivation, learning, judgment and memory. It damages various body systems as well as families, relationships, schools, workplaces and neighborhoods."
People may say, "Addiction isn't a disease because you chose to use an addictive substance." I've heard this argument many times. This is simply not true. No one wants to become addicted to a substance. I never wanted to become addicted to the antidepressants I was prescribed. That is just one example of someone who did not have a choice. Addiction rewires the brain. That's not something anyone can chose and it isn't something you can do on your own. It is a deviation from a state of health, and is therefore a disease.
Even if it was not a disease, people who struggle with addiction are still deserving of help. Disease or not, they are still human beings. They deserve treatment. Don't treat them as anything less than human because we all make mistakes. No one is perfect.
Sources:
"Addiction As a Disease." Center On Addiction. Partnership to End Addiction. 14 April 2017. Web. 30 April 2020. https://www.centeronaddiction.org/what-addiction/addiction-disease.