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Drug addiction and alcoholism are not diseases. They are lifestyles, religions, and love affairs, with health risks, and quite often health consequences. They can be a pattern of repeated self-inflicted injuries, or even not-so-slow forms of suicide.

An addiction can also be a well-hidden lifelong place of refuge. It all depends on the user, the drug(s) involved, and the relative level of social stigma attached to the specific substance and its users.

According to Thomas Szasz, drug abuse and addiction falls into a larger category of questionable disease criteria; socially disapproved of behaviors that place the subject at risk. Drug addiction and alcoholism share these characteristics with sexual deviance, religious heresy, and political dissidence.(Szasz, 1997:14)

The labeling of choices and their consequences as diseases in and of themselves at once relieves the deviant of responsibility, and grants authority to society to "treat" the deviant behaviors. It is a simultaneous nullification of both rights and personal accountability.(Szasz 1997:292)

The disease model of addiction implies that treatment by professionals is absolutely necessary. "Just say no," is given credibility as a strategy for the avoidance of addiction, but "just stop" is not viewed as a viable option by those who earn their living from this supposed disease. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I have personally known people who made the choice to discontinue their drug use completely without coercion or support, and succeeded in doing do. The treatment establishment has a handy explanation for this; that if they were able to stop, they "weren't really addicted," even if they experienced very painful physical withdrawal symptoms. They were just suffering from a "dependency," not an addiction.

The existence of chemical dependencies is a medical fact, but they are only considered to be diseases when not sanctioned by the medical establishment. The mentally ill are told that they will need to be on psychiatric medications for the rest of their lives, and indeed for the more severely disabled among them, the discontinuation of a medication may have grave consequences. Yet this dependency is considered a treatment, not a disease. The use of methadone or buprenorphine maintenance to treat opiate/opioid dependency is regarded in a similar manner; again the dependency is the cure and not the disease.

While some treatment programs are moving away from 12-step oriented therapies, the endorsement and inclusion of these theistic groups continues to be a common practice. This practice confirms the addict's powerlessness over addiction, and the inability of professionals to treat this condition without help from self-help groups, and divine intervention. As the definition of addiction changes, treatments and 12-step groups spring up in response to problematic aspects of the human condition.Eventually treatment will have to develop a cure for itself, and a 12-step group "Anonymous Anonymous," will help people deal with their addiction to self-help groups.

The strange notion that everyone has the right to pleasure themselves, or for that matter poison themselves, go crazy, and die in whatever manner appeals to them most just hasn't caught on. For now, the theft, enslavement, and destruction of an individual's life is a privilege reserved for the state, and the corporate world. Let's be honest, and stop talking of disease or even drug crime. The term used should be "Destruction of State and Corporate Property."

Reference:

Szasz, Thomas, Insanity: The Idea and its Consequences1997, Syacuse University Press, Syracuse NY

Learn more about this author, Dan Mage.
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