Addiction and the Individual

Alcohol addiction has been referred to in print as a disease since the end of the 18th century. 1 By 1956, the American Medical Association (AMA) had endorsed the disease model, and the view has since received public and unequivocal endorsement by numerous influential medical organizations, including the World Health Organization. 2 Researchers commonly use a variety of methodologies that rely on the disease model to attempt to understand various aspects of addiction, and several methods that have been used to study addiction suggest that the disease model is a good one. For instance, twin studies and adoption studies have provided evidence that genetics plays some role in addiction. Moreover, molecular biology explains certain phenomena that occur in the brain with repeated exposure to addictive drugs. These findings seem to make sense of the compulsive element that is associated with many cases of addiction, at the very least suggesting that something other than simple choice is involved. Nevertheless, much care must be taken to situate the cart relative to the horse in this research, and to disentangle the many and diverse threads of addiction research, if we are to evaluate the contention that addiction is a disease. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.