Is addiction really a disease?

[Jemmons]

10. Motives.....

Some people think a disease has to be permanent to be a disease, but I haven't found permanancy in the definition of disease.

Some people think "well its not a disease like malaria", and therefore, its not a disease (yes gobsmack).

Some people think disease has to have a simple physical explanation. That if it's complicated, and/or involves cognitive, environmental, social factors, then it is not a disease. Somehow.

So you are listing reasons people rely on for thinking that addiction is not a disease. And you might think that im looking for any obscure reason to move addiction out of the disease category.

You will know though that a lot of people will do this in order to get addiction back into the crime category. So that we can lock up more people.

The way that you feel about that might color your perception of people like Lewis (or me) who tries to move addiction into a social or psychological category. So what we can treat addiction with better success.

The odd thing though, is that I dont have a strong ulterior motive for doing it. I am just not in the narrowly medical camp. I just dont find the science convincing. And I think that stress does a lot more damage than what we normally would think. And I dont trust the medical industry to solve a lot more than their own financial worries.

I cant speak for Lewis but I think that he is pretty close to that position too.