03-16-2020, 02:42 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-16-2020, 02:46 PM by RiverNotch.)
I think we are being very misleading in saying addiction is *either* a disease or a matter of choice. As a whole, it's deeply complicated, and in general it's both -- a disorder of choice, one material i'm reading puts it, and that's perhaps the best way to put it. It's a series of choices that are often forced upon someone due to circumstances that are often beyond their control, such as with the overprescription of oxycodone the past couple of decades or the poverty endemic among a lot of urban communities here in the Philippines; often, it is intertwined with disorders that are unequivocally disorders, like anxiety or depression. Saying it's a matter of choice has as much stock to it as calling it a disease, although I think it's important that the current medical consensus is that it's a disease.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obs...a-disease/
Of course, I never once implied that addiction as a disease takes away any agency from the addict. Another thing from the article: responsibility without blame. The disease model I think works best treating addiction at large, while individuals perhaps recover better thinking about it as an issue of agency. Either way, it's something to be treated by changes in lifestyle and a lot of help from other people: going cold turkey is one of the worst ways to get "cured".
As for "humoralism", it was not a response to your point, lol. My response was to both you and duke's responses. But where humoralism has stock is in its general assertion that diseases must be treated with as wide an approach as possible, not just in terms of germs and antibiotics but also in terms of individual psychology (like the most basic behavior to be reinforced of washing one's hands regularly) to the larger issues at play (such as a broken medical system). As above, so below.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obs...a-disease/
Of course, I never once implied that addiction as a disease takes away any agency from the addict. Another thing from the article: responsibility without blame. The disease model I think works best treating addiction at large, while individuals perhaps recover better thinking about it as an issue of agency. Either way, it's something to be treated by changes in lifestyle and a lot of help from other people: going cold turkey is one of the worst ways to get "cured".
As for "humoralism", it was not a response to your point, lol. My response was to both you and duke's responses. But where humoralism has stock is in its general assertion that diseases must be treated with as wide an approach as possible, not just in terms of germs and antibiotics but also in terms of individual psychology (like the most basic behavior to be reinforced of washing one's hands regularly) to the larger issues at play (such as a broken medical system). As above, so below.