The True Nature Of Drug Addiction

[david (OP)]

It's not a moral failing, it's not a disease, either. It is a personal choice and ownership of the issue must be accepted by the user/addict.

Do you agree or not ?

[Chip]

i couldn't agree more.

i am a user/addict because i chose to ignore the published facts and dived straight in.

my fault ... i accept that.

good point, David !

[Pullmyhair.]

I agree and disagree. I agree that it's not a moral failing, and to a point or at least in early addiction it's a choice. The choice part of it gets a little blurry the deeper and longer your addiction goes, but that's not to say you're absolved of responsibility for your actions. As far as addiction as a disease, I've gone back and forth on it, but with opiate addiction specifically, long term use changes the physiology of your brain, there is a physical change, and there are real physical symptoms, so in many ways it fits the criteria of a chronic disease (or disorder). I think by rejecting the concept of addiction as a disease wholesale, and reducing to simply a personal choice trivializes and invalidates the lifelong struggle that addiction is. By saying it's only a personal choice, you're in fact saying that it IS a moral failing. If it is just a personal choice, why would anyone choose to continue using in the face of all of the negative side effects? It just doesn't explain what we all have experienced.  It has to be one or the other, it's a choice we continue to make because we are immoral, or lack willpower, or just don't want sobriety bad enough, or we're 'constitutionally incapable of being honest with ourselves', OR, there's an observable pathology, or a demonstratable physiologic change that is caused by long term use (which there is). Again, I've gone back and forth on the validity of the addiction as a disease model, and I don't know if that's true of all substance abuse, but I do believe it to be true of opiate addiction, but even so, as I said that doesn't absolve personal responsibility.

[DeadCat]

Funny, this book/web site/Ted Talk and related press have been cited here in several threads (I started one too)and people keep "finding" it all over. That's OK.

I think a start is understaning the differencees between "dependence" and "addiction." The former is a physiologic condition and the latter is a behavioral health one in the support of the dependence. The "bad choices" an addict makes are often almost forced upon them. For instance, breaking the law is a bad choice but when our [vice] is made illegal, we havent actually become "more criminal" in our behaviours.

Drug habits in the US from the Civil War to the First World War were usually not ciminal and thus not officially "bad."

Some of the biggest drug pushers in the world were lauded in England for it and welcomed to the Huse of Lords. Big Pharma today is similar, as they churn out damaging products and push people to want them and push doctors to dispense them, all for profit more than for actual health care. Does enabling this make the UK and US "criminal" nations? (My own opinion is that they do but there are no laws to codify it.)

[nick]

Drug use is a choice.Drug addition isn't.

[Seven]

Nick, that statement doesnt quite add up.  Snigger

[Narkotikon]

Pullmyhair said it best.

I consider addiction a disease, simply b/c there are physical changes in the brain.  PET scans prove this to be true. 

I have a problem with the statement that "once an addict, always an addict," even if you get sober / on maintenance.  Addiction is defined as the continued use of a substance despite negative consequences.  If someone is on maintenance, or has gotten sober, and is no longer experiencing negative consequences, I don't consider them an addict anymore. 

[Illadelph215]

As I wouldn't know because I'm not old enough or been in this game long enough, I've been told that it never truly leaves....even people who have been sober for 20+ years say they still think about using so wouldn't they still be an "addict" technically or no?

[Narkotikon]

As I wouldn't know because I'm not old enough or been in this game long enough, I've been told that it never truly leaves....even people who have been sober for 20+ years say they still think about using so wouldn't they still be an "addict" technically or no?

http://www.passagesmalibu.com/

Trust and believe in Pax Prentiss. 

[6-mam]

I think I agree, but it's kinda hard to understand what exactly youre asking.

I don't think using drugs is morally wrong, but at the same time I think most users self medicate. At least when it comes to continual use.

Compulsive use could fall into several categories imo.

[theSWPK]

I agree with those above. Use IS a choice, barring extreme circumstance. Pain mgmt is kinda grey to me but mostly falls under the no choice. Then there's the trafficked people's force addicted.

Anywho.

Once the brakes flew off on my addiction, I became enslaved. I feel that the logical impairments, i.e. morals and justification, become outside of control. In my experience it was draining my poor mothers oxycodone (why did she have to get roxy 10s?!) One or two pills at a time. "She won't notice" "she won't notice" until there were 2 left. I used to refer to the amount I could steal without visually altering the level of pills as the 'threshold of visual perception' and it was more elastic than the checks I wrote.

[DeadCat]

CPP's (Chronic Pain Patiens) who take their meds just to fight pain aren't "addicts any more thna someone with frequent headaches who takes aspirin is addicted to it. Yet, they will become dependent (a medical condition) on the opiates if they take them long and frequently enough. They still won't be "addicted" or themselves be "addicts."

Addiction is when dependency is coupled with compulsive use and priotitizing the acquiring and consuming of the DOC above and beyond the physical need of the drug. A person who takes buprenorphine or methadone and doesn't get high, or make bad choces to get those drugs is still "Drug dependent" but can't be put in the same category as an out of control adddict.

I'm physically dependent on buprenorphine to avoid withdrawl and post acute withdrawal and to keep learned compulsive use in check but people who don't know my past don't even imagine me to be a junkie.

[LoneRanger7]

I think I agree, but it's kinda hard to understand what exactly youre asking.

I don't think using drugs is morally wrong, but at the same time I think most users self medicate. At least when it comes to continual use.

Compulsive use could fall into several categories imo.

I think the self-medicating aspect is important. I know I was diagnosed with depression. I fricking hate taking those damn SSRI's but I must admit that when I do, my cravings are almost non-existent. If I stop taking them, slowly but surely the monkey creeps out of the closet and tries to climb on my back. So in that sense, is addiction the disease, or the treatment? Because it certainly makes me FEEL better. It affects my life like a nuclear bomb dropped on a field of daisies, but I FEEL fantastic while it's happening! I just don't give a flying fuck about anything or anyone else.

Addiction is ultimately a lonely place, unless you can find a SO with the same DOC. That's always nice... I imagine myself growing old and becoming an incorrigible junkie once I have finished accomplishing things in life and have nothing left to lose. Fuck retirement, imma be using my old person status to break the rules all over the place. Junkie Bad Grandpa.

[Chip]

i get depression on about day 4 after last using meth. if i re-medicate, the depression comes on after day 2 and fucks my short term tolerance up.

using sparingly is akin to walking on water.

[Chip]

As I wouldn't know because I'm not old enough or been in this game long enough, I've been told that it never truly leaves....even people who have been sober for 20+ years say they still think about using so wouldn't they still be an "addict" technically or no?

http://www.passagesmalibu.com/

Trust and believe in Pax Prentiss.

Rated the Number One Rehab in the World - looks like an expensive proposition.

i'm with that singer than passed recently, because i don't do rehab, either. it's just my code, i think most fail.