GoPGo
Cheesehead
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2013
- Messages
- 1,862
- Reaction score
- 150
I would really appreciate it if you would stop talking about something you obviously have no idea about. There´s a huge difference between a guy occasionally taking drugs because he enjoys being high and a drug addict.
Maybe you should think before you accuse someone of not knowing what they're talking about. I'm a certified psychiatric nurse with going on 8 years of experience in acute care, which includes... you guessed it, drug addiction.
I'm sorry, the idea that drug addiction is a "disease" is nothing more than a metaphor that some take WAY too literally. The biggest problem with the field of psychiatry is the continued legitimization of maladaptive and malevolent behavior with each edition of the DSM. For instance, the DSM-V now identifies "Pedophillic Disorder." I wonder how long it will be until some degenerate child ****** gets off easy thanks to that stroke of brilliance. Now I'm fully aware that there are some circles that inexplicably consider drug addiction to be a "disease" but there are other circles that reject that hypothesis, and a hypothesis is all it is. I will repeat, there is no empirical evidence that supports the disease model.
Drug addiction occurs due to stupid decisions on the part of the addicted, PERIOD. The only exception is babies born addicted to drugs because of their mothers' stupid decisions. People can overcome their addiction by making wise decisions and following through on them. No other "disease" can be overcome by making the decision that you're no longer going to have it anymore. And for the record, lack of will power isn't a disease either.
Again, labeling drug addiction as a disease does NOTHING to help addicts. I couldn't count the number of times I've heard addicts use the disease label to justify their behavior. The worst one that stands out most in my mind was just last fall. We had a 20-something woman who was 7 months pregnant and was in for an overdose on Xanax and methamphetamine. When asked how she feels about what might be happening to her baby, she said, "Hey, what do you expect me to do? I HAVE A F***ING DISEASE! There's nothing I can do about it so get off my ***!" That's not a paraphrase either. It's a verbatim quote.
There is exactly one and only one benefit to labeling drug addiction as a disease... expanding insurance coverage. That's it. And those proponents are where you find the disease model being touted the most.