Addiciton: Disease or sickness or choice?

You ask what is the difference?
Choice means you choose to be stoned
Sickness could conceivably apply to an addict because his body reacts to no having the drug
A disease? definitely not!! the do gooders and bureaucrats want to say addiction is a disease that way they can force another burden on the few taxpayers left(that way they can create another bureaucracy to line their own pocket at our expense. IT IS NOT! a disease is something that you can get without any action on your part. You can get cancer and never have had a cigarette, You can have a heart attack and never eaten a fatty food in your life. You can get the flu from walking next too someone who has it.
You CANNOT become an addict if you never take a drink of alcohol, smoke crack, mainline heroin or snort Coke. Some conscious act on your part must occur before you become an addict! You ask why the semantic distinction it is because you cannot discharge an employee for a disease he has no control over(cancer etc) but an addiction is a sickness not a disease and if you STOP drinking, shooting, snorting or smoking your drug of choice the illness stops, Therefore all addiction begins with a choice.
I am weary of paying for people who chose to not take care of themselves.
I have managed to party through the late 60's, 70's, 80's etc. still worked full time.

29 comments

  • gammanu95
    8 years ago
    Weakness. Apart from certain medical conditions, if you consume so much of a substance that you cannot live without, it is because you are weak. I was weak when I smoked cigarettes, it took strength to quit.
  • gammanu95
    8 years ago
    Btw, disease and sickness are same thing, while addiction and choice are mutually exclusive. But you do choose to become addicted.
  • jester214
    8 years ago
    Is AIDS a disease? Some conscious act on your part has to occur before you can get AIDS.
  • gammanu95
    8 years ago
    You're addicted to AIDS?
  • Papi_Chulo
    8 years ago
    I agree there needs to be personal responsibility - but we are all fallible in one way or another (e.g. someone who overeats or does not eat healthy, etc) and there should be help for those that need-it in order for them to get better.

    Perhaps they should not be seen as helpless victims; but they should receive help to get better IMO.
  • jackslash
    8 years ago
    There are differences between a disease like typhoid fever and an addiction to drugs or alcohol. You can choose not to use drugs and you will never be addicted. However, once someone is addicted it is very difficult to stop. To overcome addiction, people need treatment. Withdrawal makes people physically ill and they need medication and a treatment plan.
  • gammanu95
    8 years ago
    I am disappointed to hear what sounds like excuse-making for addicts. Addicts choose to get high. I should choose whether or not my tax dollars get wasted on addicts.
  • NinaBambina
    8 years ago
    It is a disease. It is CHOICE to try something addictive, but once it becomes an addiction it fits the criteria for a disease. Addiction literally changes your brain chemistry and physiology of your body - not just psychologically - which is why people with addictions will get physically ill (even to the point of seizures or death) if they don't get their "dose."

    Saying it's NOT a disease just because someone choose to try it is like saying, by that logic, lung cancer isn't a disease, it's just a choice, because the person CHOSE to smoke; adult onset diabetes isn't a disease, just a choice, because that person CHOSE to have a poor diet and not exercise. Would you go so far as to say that? It's the same logic.
  • NinaBambina
    8 years ago
    And gammanut the AIDs comment by jester is asking, if you think addiction is not a disease because people choose to initially take the drug, is AIDs also not a disease since it is almost always acquired through choice actions?
  • gammanu95
    8 years ago
    Go back to your imaginary "internship", honey, the men are talking
  • NinaBambina
    8 years ago
    Golly gee, you just put me in my place while also adding a thoughtful, relevant, and eloquent response to my post.

    On a more realistic note, gammanut, you keep making yourself look like a child who is unable to have actual dialogue with a man OR a woman.

    Talk to me when you have something relevant to say.
  • rockstar666
    8 years ago
    I have an addictive personality, and have been lucky to be able to stop my abuses before they ruined my like. My clubbing is somewhat of an addiction too. But is it a disease?

    I find mental disorders that are bad habits to be a separate class from a pathogenic disease like autism; people with autism have no choice in the matter while I can choose to not take drugs, fuck lots of women, or even play golf if I'm doing these things to the exclusion of all else.

    I hesitate to call an addictive personality a disease though. It's just something to deal with myself.
  • gammanu95
    8 years ago
    Aww, did the little princess get her feelings hurt? That's okay, you're still pretty. Isn't she pretty?
  • NinaBambina
    8 years ago
    Gammanut what on earth could you possibly have said that hurt my feelings? You can't even sling a good insult. "The men are talking" really? Oh wow, you really got me with that one!

    You can continue to speak on irrelevant things because obviously my paralegal internship makes you mad or you wouldn't have randomly thrown it into a debate. Does the truth hurt you? Sorry. I'll keep winning, you keep hating. And keep the irrelevance coming, you know he easily I can dish you out a verbal shredding.

    And PS I already know I'm an ignorant slut before you say that tired phrase for the 100th time so come with something else with that teeny tiny hard-on you have for me.
  • gammanu95
    8 years ago
    Clearly, I've gotten under your skin, again and as always. It's just too easy. #winning
  • gawker
    8 years ago
    My ATF has been a heroin addict for 15 years. She & I have had this discussion 100 times. As Rockstar hinted at, certain people are pre-disposed to addiction and more susceptible to have problems with addictive behaviors. She recently was opioid free for 3 months and relapsed. I was so pissed at her for CHOOSING to buy and use heroin again.
    She says she missed the "comfort" everyday and she went into a depression where she just didn't give a fuck. She got herself into detox again and when I saw her today she was clean again.
    Her Dad & her brother are "recovering heroin addicts & her Mom is alcoholic. I suspect there are genetic factors which enter into this equation.
  • san_jose_guy
    8 years ago
    Lots of destructive lifestyle issues. If bad enough, it is an addiction. But it is the effected person themselves who had to make the call.

    SJG

    http://blog.asiantown.net/-/7610/vietnam…

    kaos
    http://www.biroco.com/kaos/kaos.pdf
  • a21985
    8 years ago
    Its a disease, plain and simple, that happens to be caused quite often by a knowing decision. Addiction is a complicated thing, but at its base, we know it deals heavily with brain chemistry. The use of drugs or certain activities creates an abnormally quick and large release of chemicals that make us happy through our brain's reward system. This can fundamentally change how the brain functions as the brain then can sometimes struggle to even get back to what was it's normal operating level for these chemicals...thus leading to the insatiable need to do these drugs or perform that activity again at the brain's urging. (Oddly enough, for others here in management, understanding the brains reward system and what can trigger it behavior wise can be quite helpful to get the most out of your staff)

    Ultimately, that change in the brain lasts, even if one "overcomes" that addiction. Addiction has physical impacts/origins, not simply mental. How anyone can sit here and ignorantly not call it a disease is almost laughable.

    Is there some merit to it being a "weakness" as well? I don't think it's ludicrous since the genesis of someones addiction is often rooted in a poor decision that could be avoided, but I think overcoming addiction, even if temporarily is more a of an incredible feat of strength than anything else.
  • san_jose_guy
    8 years ago
    Most people have some negative chemical things or negative behaviors going on in their lives. But as I see it, things are improving.

    Part of it is just that no people expect to live longer, so they think about such stuff more.

    SJG
  • Call.Me.Ishmael
    8 years ago
    It's not a disease in the purely microbial sense, with bacterial or viral vectors. But it is a disorder that can have its roots in biological and/or situational triggers.

    It can be thought of as a behavioral disease, not dissimilar to obsessive/compulsive disorder and countless other disorders that are tied to mental issues (sometimes inherited and sometimes not).

    Not everything has to originate from a restroom doorknob to be considered a disease.
  • Tiredtraveler
    8 years ago
    Bottom line if you are an alcoholic and stop drinking you will pass a drug test and will not be impaired.
    If you have contracted aids or measles or plague you have an infection that you can't cure by stopping a behavior.
    If you stop having unprotected sex you will still have aids or is you do not get anymore rat fleas bite you will still have plague.
    If you are drunk and stop drinking you will no linger be drunk. If you smoke pot and stop you will no longer test positive for THC.
    The same thing goes toward if you ride a motorcycle without a helmet and suffer a head injury why should you expect me to pay for treating your stupidity.
    Bottom line is if you never shoot heroin or smoke crack you not become addicted. And their is not one person living in this country that can honestly say that they do not know how addictive those drugs are.
  • twentyfive
    8 years ago
    ^^^You need to calm the duck down. Hard to believe that you are serious, you seem damaged.
  • Dougster
    8 years ago
    suckstar37: "I have an addictive personality, and have been lucky to be able to stop my abuses before they ruined my like."

    Will you admit to needing to take ED medicines even though you are only in your 40s. Maybe you're not completely "ruined" but that's pretty bad.
  • Dougster
    8 years ago
    I always find debates like this amusing. Nobody has yet pulled out the definition of "disease" they use in medical texts. Just everyone thinks they know what it means. Maybe pulling out that definition would help decide the matter?

    Just an idea. But carry on if your goals aren't really to decide the question but rather have some fun having a good debate.
  • a21985
    8 years ago
    ^ To add to that, as rousing as this debate is, some people here are not only woefully ignorant on the topic, but they have failed to noticed that most all recognized and trusted medical associations have classified addiction as a disease. Debate ended for those who truly cared about coming to an actual conclusion on the topic.
  • jester214
    8 years ago
    LOL. Dugly lecturing people on how to properly debate... Don't you need to go bump some 5 year old thread to make fun of RickDugan?
  • Dougster
    8 years ago
    ^^^ there's an example of great debating right there. jestie can't find anything wrong with what I said. Agrees with it in fact. But hates the fact that I'm right. As he always it when I'm right. So throws out a red herring. Logic/debating never were jestie's strong suits. Guess there wasn't much emphasis on that in the art history courses he took.
  • NinaBambina
    8 years ago
    Gammanut, if you telling me "the men are talking" and calling me pretty and a princess while not providing one morsel of a retort, or relevance at all, to my factual post is "winning" in your mind, then you are a complete loser and you are living in another galaxy. You, winning? Where? How?

    You are probably decades older than me, but you act like a bratty child I would refuse to babysit.
  • rockstar666
    8 years ago
    OMG. A political spin, and a bad spin at that, on whether addiction is a disease is typical on TUSCL. While my opinion is firmly on the conservative side of the fence...I mean wall...I'm sure the right wing zealots here would never mistake me for a conservative.

    What does that tell you?
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