How we talk about drug addiction

In 2016, addiction is still misunderstood. It’ll be easier to treat addiction once we all speak about the problem with the same basic understanding. Not all is known about addiction, but what is known should be common knowledge, seeing as how addiction causes so much unnecessary death, suffering and economic waste. How we talk about drug addiction is critical to dealing with the problem.

For instance, many people still don’t think of alcohol as a drug, so when someone says “drug addiction” most people think about heroin, cocaine, or other addictive drugs, but not alcohol. This might be because our society chose alcohol as our legal drug, despite the fact it does more damage than all other drugs combined. Just because alcohol is legal doesn’t change it’s chemical make-up and classification as a drug. We could have chosen some form of opium as our legal drug – as an aside, opiate drugs were legal back in the early 20th century.

Another area of misunderstanding that surrounds drug addiction is cause and effect. I’ve heard educated healthcare professionals, who gave lip service to the disease concept of addiction, begin discussing drug addiction as caused by early childhood development or psychological problems or emotional instability. All of these conditions can contribute to the progression of addiction, the behavioral problems associated with addiction and the difficulty in treating addiction, but addiction itself is a chronic, relapsing brain disease that can affect anyone regardless of childhood development, race, gender, psychological makeup, socioeconomic status or level of education.

Adding to the misunderstanding is the propensity of many people to react negatively when addiction is called a disease. I understand the reaction, although I know the reaction is misguided. When someone says they’re tired of every behavioral problem being labeled as a condition over which the person has no control, like Affluenza, I understand the reaction. However, scientific research shows that addiction is a chronic brain disease, but this doesn’t mean that a person is not held responsible for their actions. Prisons are filled with drug addicts. Alcoholics Anonymous led the way back in 30s toward alcoholics taking responsibility for their condition — the 12 steps. Although there’s an admission of powerlessness over alcohol in AA’s 1st step (disease concept), the rest of the steps are designed to take responsibility to find the power to remain abstinent and recover.

Probably the most common misunderstanding that hampers how we talk about drug addiction is the confusion between substance abuse and addiction. As I’ve written many times, substance abuse is usually temporary and situational, like drinking during college years, or bar-hopping after a divorce. This misunderstanding between substance abuse and addiction is dangerous. If your teenage daughter is drinking regularly after starting college, is it temporary substance abuse or the early stage of alcoholism? If there are enough signs and symptoms, it never hurts for an addiction professional to perform assessment. This is another reason to gain more knowledge about addiction, so that you can better distinguish between abuse and addiction. When healthcare professionals get abuse and addiction confused it can lead to dire consequences. If you hear a healthcare professional say that not all addiction is alike and that many young people mature out of addiction and drink/use other drugs socially later in life, beware, because they’re confusing temporary substance abuse with addiction. Addiction is progressive (it starts off looking like substance abuse, then progresses to middle and then late stages) and is the number cause of preventable death.

Once you’ve read the medical facts related to addiction, you begin to develop a comprehensive understanding and appreciate the nuances, then how you talk about addiction changes — then the solutions make more sense.