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New U.S. bills and recent scientific research wants to classify drug and alcohol addiction as a disease. While the intention is altruistic, the outcome of the name change could have dire effects on addicts who can just blame their brain for their cravings.

The next time Lindsay Lohan or Daniel Baldwin enter rehab, we might not be pitying their moral failings; instead, we could be classifying their falls from grace as a consequence of brain disease. The idea of renaming drug and alcohol addiction as a disease, as opposed to a habit of weak willpower, is gaining momentum in the U.S., even if the fallout of that reclassification could have harmful consequences.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del) is sponsoring a bill called Recognizing Addiction As a Disease Act of 2007, according to Slate. Addiction should be called a disease, the bill claims. Why?

…because drugs change the brain’s structure and manner in which it functions. These brain changes can be long lasting, and can lead to the harmful behaviors seen in people who abuse drugs.

The bill also explains how renaming addiction could change how addicts recover from their vices. It states: 




The pejorative term ‘abuse’ used in connection with diseases of addiction has the adverse effect of increasing social stigma and personal shame, both of which are so often barriers to an individual’s decision to seek treatment.

Biden’s bill isn’t the only evidence of a society increasingly turned on to the idea of addiction stemming from the frontal lobes. In early July, a Time cover story investigated recent studies that concluded how drugs co-opt brain functions and how addiction “can affect the brain, by hijacking memory-making processes and by exploiting emotions.” As the Time reporter explains, some researchers are focusing on the brain’s reward system, consisting mainly of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Basically, dopamine gives your brain a mini orgasm when you do something your body finds pleasurable. The article states:

One particular group of dopamine receptors, for example, called D3, seems to multiply in the presence of cocaine, methamphetamine and nicotine, making it possible for more of the drug to enter and activate nerve cells.

The science behind addiction can be overwhelming to some people, but a more practical implication should be relevant to many workers: Addiction patients are discriminated against because employers and insurers often don’t classify these disorders as diseases of the brain, according to former first ladies Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter in a Washington Times op-ed. It’s a reality many alcoholics face if they want to seek time off from work and still find a human resources manager to sympathize with their plight.

But as more evidence touts the theory of addiction as a brain disease, critics find the idea too simplistic. Sally Satel, who wrote the Slate article and is also a staff psychiatrist at the Oasis Clinic in Washington, D.C, isn’t a fan of bringing the brain into drug or alcohol abuse, writing in Slate:

The brain disease rhetoric is fatalistic, implying that users can never fully free themselves of their drug or alcohol problems. Finally, and most important, it threatens to obscure the vast role personal agency plays in perpetuating the cycle of use and relapse to drugs and alcohol.



Satel also attacks the link between the brain and addiction because pharmaceutical companies will be aggressive in supplying addicts with more drugs to soothe their cerebrals. Over-medicating a disorder that many of us call a seriously nasty habit could cleanse the addict of any shame for their wrongdoing. “It was my brain that made me shoot heroin,” the junkie can claim, therefore sidestepping any responsibility. But Satel says:

The push to destigmatize overlooks the healthy role that shame can play, by motivating many otherwise reluctant people to seek treatment in the first place and jolting others into quitting before they spiral down too far.

It’s worth applauding Congress and journalists for digging into the roots behind addiction, if only to further shine a light on what goes on in people’s brain when they reward themselves with drugs or booze. Many addicts may be curious as to why they feel compelled to seek their vices as if an uncontrollable urge is shaking their core.

But when something like alcoholism is classified as a disease, the treatment process must also be overhauled. Would a program like Alcoholics Anonymous hold any weight when alcoholism is rooted in the brain? Could fMRI machines soon replace counselling? The dangers of re-identifying addiction could ripple to every corner of the world, even if the issue is before the U.S. Congress for now.

Robert Downey Jr., are you listening? You might soon have a Get Out of Rehab Free card, even if it might do you more harm than good.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 12:25 am and is filed under Meth Addiction, Addiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.