Why Addiction is Not a Disease: Into the Debate

Why Addiction is Not a Disease!

• One of the main proponents

• Stanton Peele

• http://www.peele.net/

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=05ANXZKdCg0

• http://www.peele.net/lib/

foxnfriends.html

Main Messages

• A host of addictions may be understood as disease, but

they are not diseases

• “Addiction is an experience people can get caught up in but that still expresses their values, skills at living, and personal resolve – or lack of it”.

• Upon stopping use – peoples’ problems don’t disappear

• Addiction has become a marketplace

Sit with this…

• We will never, ever treat away drug

abuse, alcoholism, and the host of other

behaviors that are now called addictive

behaviors…

Main Messages (cont.)

• No biological urge to form addictions that will one day be found under the microscope

• We are creating more addictions ever year / generation (who we often tell will never get better)

• CHILD OF A PERSON WITH A DISEASE OF ALCOHOLISM

• Mix up moral responsibility with disease diagnosis

Peele’s idea of treatment / helping

• Nurturing communities can protect and support the individual and family reduce an entire range of illness

• Here people learn that can control their destinies = Self

Efficacy

• But we have not capitalized on self-efficacy, connection, support, and education instead we find it easier to…

The Disease Timeline

First Generation Diseases: AIDS

Clearly connected with the functioning of the body

Second Generation Diseases:Mental Disorders

Third Generation: Addictions

Convincing Ourselves the Impossible

• Mental problems as “diseases” broadly accepted by 1950’s

• Mentally people are sick like those suffering from sore throats…Medical science knows neither specific causes…nor specific ways of preventing them (World Book Encyclopedia, 1961)

• Are we closer today?

Szasz, Foucault, Bateson, Laing

Szasz, Foucault, Bateson, Laing: Explanations / Answers

• Family and the double bind

• Community

• Deep Understanding / Safety and Support

• Spiritual Journey

• Accountability

• Taking responsibility

• Today for good and bad, greater public seduced by enthusiasm

in neurosciences.

No doubt great increased understanding of brain, which has helped reduce suffering from 1st generation diseases…

• But why then have 1st and 2nd generation disease rates climbed?

• Why so many pills?

• Why are a great deal of “so called” addicts now dually

diagnosed?

• It is obvious that medical and pharmaceutical breakthroughs for first-generation diseases have not been forthcoming in dealing with our second and more noticeably 3rd generation diseases.

• Medical community has itself contributed to increase in addiction?

AA Becomes Institutionalized

• Private fellowship now co-opted into mainstream medicine and psychotherapy (1970s)

• Linchpin for services (widespread in U.S. and Canada)

• We become convinced (lay public) millions of people are in need of services (just not acknowledging)

• Thus AA moved away from an anonymous program; one where law, medicine and the like now coerce people into a one size fits all approach.

• An approach that suggests once and alcoholic always an alcoholic

Diseasing of America

• AA/Medical view is popular and is being applied to every-kind

of behavioral problem

o Gambling o Overeaters o Compulsive shoppers o Relationships addicts, love addicts, and sex addicts o Suffers from agoraphobia to severe anxiety to eating paint chipso ADCOAo Depression o PMS o Video Game Addicts

Can We Escape Being Diseased?

• Worse yet, disease according to its own tenets - is biological in nature, and yet sufferer(s) are told they are incurable!

Conclusions: Peele’s Final Stand

• Disease conceptions are bad science

• Biology is not behavior

• People’s belief that they have a disease makes it less likely that they

will outgrow the problem

• We also most guaranteeing relapse

• Lastly, the pseudo-medical and treatments of new diseases

increasingly determine our feelings, our self-concepts, and our world

views – defining our culture and who we are.

Draw Backs: Unpeeling Peele

• Let’s Chat!