I wrote a very long answer to this the other night after mamacags posed the question...and it got zapped into the ethernet somewhere...which may be just as well, especially after reading some of the responses here.
There are addictions that are harmful to the body - alcohol, drugs, nicotine, food.
There are those that are extremely financially devastating - gambling, drugs, shopping.
There are those that are "time" and "lifestyle" addicting - reading, internet gaming, exercise.
Personally - as far as those with so-called "sex addictions" - that's just a tidy little phrase to use rather than saying the person is morally corrupt as far as sex is concerned. Get 2 consenting adults in a monogamous relationship that are having sex as often as rabbits, and people would just say they were "happy and content" with each other...no one would call that couple "sex addicts".
I have some pretty good experience with alcoholism in my life...and the damage it can do. I have also seen first hand what drugs - prescription - can do. This has been an issue in my family - my genetic one, the one I married into, and the one I have partnered with for the last 17 years, for as long as I can remember.
My father who was a violent alcoholic and yet highly functioning, and never quit drinking up until he was bed-ridden in a nursing home...which is also when he quit his 4pack a day smoking. Obviously he didn't have one addiction...but several.
It was years after she was killed before I realized it, but I know now, that my mother was addicted to diet pills. Every morning, she would lay out all these different colored little pills on her bathroom counter, to take during the day. She would get them from the pharmacy in these boxes that were 2x2x1", that when empty, I would get to use for my Barbie doll stuff. I had a whole bunch of those little boxes!
My ex MIL had both an alcohol and a Rx problem. Her youngest child, died at 24 in jail, from a drug overdose, and had been in and out of trouble over drugs and alcohol since early teens.
My other half who was a social beer-only drinker, yet crawled into a vodka bottle at the death of his father and 3 years later had to be hospitalized for 17 days in order to crawl out....the good news is he has been sober 5+ years, and though he has been told he was not an alcoholic by the doctors and could probably go back to beer drinking if he wanted to, he has no desire to "test" that theory as he never wants to be that out of control again. His mother was a binge alcoholic who was in an out of treatment centers for the last 20 years of her life. M was always very conscious of the fact that he had the "potential" to become an alcoholic, yet after having to make some incredibly hard decisions about his father, (Living Wills do not always work like they are designed to), he used vodka to conquer (ha!) what was eventually diagnosed clinical depression that he was unwilling to recognize. Trying to make a drunk see reason is an impossible task, especially when said drunk is hell-bent on destroying themself.
I, myself, do drink. Fortunately for me, my intestinal tract will keep me from ever being an alcoholic. I have a very low acceptance tolerance for most medicine...even vitamins...and all the good "drugs" -I'm allergic to. I tried cigarettes at 15 - smoked half a Marlboro and I broke out in hives. I was so stupid, 6 months later...I tried a couple of puffs of a Salem - got bigger hives, some almost like blisters.
I have gone to ACOA (adult children of alcoholics) and Al-Anon meetings. Truthfully, I thought they were horrible. I came out of those meetings feeling worse than when I went in. I do know that they are very good for some people and have a high success rate...which is a very good thing. I learned more from reading, than I did at the meetings.
Alcohol, drug, and nicotine addictions while they might not technically be a disease, the damage they do to the body will eventually cause disease to various parts of the body. We all know the diseases that are caused by alcohol and nicotine in particular, and with drugs - the damage is more dependent upon the "drug of choice" as to what happens to the body as they are more varied and tend to be more specific based on the drug itself.
And to say that an individual can just decide one day to quit, with no problem is so not true.
An alcoholic who has reached the total dependence of alcohol, on a significantly frequent basis during a 24 hour period of time - to stop cold turkey can result in a massive heart attack which can and will kill the individual. Among other things, alcohol can deplete the body's potassium to such low levels that without being in a controlled treatment environment and receiving medication and intravenous fluid, as the body detoxes the heart will stop. Even in a treatment situation, this can happen and it may not be possible to save the person.
Valium, ativan, xanax and methadone will also cause death during withdrawal if done cold turkey. Ironically, cocaine or crystal meth which may kill you while taking them...quitting cold turkey won't.
What these substances do, to everyone who uses any or all of the substances TO EXCESS, is make people become mentally dependent upon the substance. Does that make the brain "diseased"? I think so.
I think the more important thing to think about is what causes a person to use those substances to excess.
Consider all the people who drink but are not alcoholics.
Consider all the people who take a pain pill or a sleeping pill and do not become addicted to them.
Consider all the people who can try cocaine once or twice and never want to do so again.
Consider all the people who have tried or even smoked when out drinking, who either don't want to continue, or just tire of it and quit with no problem and never want another one.
After seeing people with addictions, up close and personal, for most of my life, I have to believe that some of us are just predisposed to become "addicted" to something.
Do some of us have genetic markers, as BEG and others have suggested, to become addicts? Keeping in mind, that not all addictions are harmful - I personally, do not in the least think my chocolate addiction is harmful. My two year sugar dependency that I developed was becoming harmful physically in my weight gain, and potential
for developing diabetes and my family will attest that I was an absolute bitch the first 3-4 weeks after I reduced my sugar intake to almost nil...I did eat about 2 tablespoons of M&M's at night or I probably would have slit my wrists or killed one or both of the two men in my house!
Are we just mentally unstable ( a nicer way of saying "not sane"), as Mrs Smith has suggested? Hmmm....that would mean that ANYONE who does some activity that has become addictive to the individual - whether it does harm to the body or not - is "not sane".
I know, for me personally, that while I don't have substance addictions, I think the "addictive" tendencies that are in my family...have just manifested themselves differently. I have had "issues" with shopping, my reading and internet gaming, have at times, been issues. Sugar definitely was. Chocolate? There is no doubt, it's necessary for my mental survival!
I don't think anyone with any type of addiction should ever be labelled "victim". That's misusing a word as a cop-out to obtain sympathy for the addict. If anyone is a "victim of substance abuse", it would be the friends and family of those who are the addicts. Those individuals are the true victims of addiction...they are the ones who suffer from the addicts behavior. The child born to the addicted mother with fetal drug or alcohol syndrome. The child who watches their parent drink themselves into oblivion and has to take care of them, with no one caring for the child. The wife or child is who is beaten during a drug or alcohol rage. The family who loses their home because the father had a gambling addiction. The friends or family members of the addict who has stolen from them, in order to by more drugs or go gambling. Those are the "victims".
The addict doesn't care. They are too deep into their addiction to recognize what their addiction is doing to themselves, their family or their friends. Sure, at first, when the addiction doesn't have them by the throat, they may see some effects...but the addict will justify anything that has become detrimental to themself or anyone else...as someone else's fault. The addict is unable to see that they, in fact, were the ones who willingly made the choice to drink, or use drugs, or gamble.
"Is addiction a disease?" is an awfully broad question to begin with....however, I do think SOME addictions
can become a precursor to physical disease. I also think SOME addictions can cause such an extreme mental dependency which may have a worse effect on the individual - and possibly their friends, families, and careers - than any physical disease ever could affect.
It might be better to ask if the "mental dependency" of addiction is a disease, a glitch in the brain construction,
or is it a defect in the individual's "psyche" development?
