[quote=“krnyc2008”]
I assume BS is of the camp that it is a personal failing and those people should be punished as opposed to rehabilitated. Education about & treatment of addiction still has a long way to go in the US unfortunately. The general population would rather waste money putting them in prison than dealing with the actual problem & being more cost effective because they feel addicts deserve it.
[quote=“Yayyywork”]
I was not being serious. It was a questionable joke.
That being said, I don’t think it’s a disease. I also don’t think there’s a need to punish people. You can help someone in addiction without feeling it necessary to tell them they’re victems to a disease.
Alcoholism creates defined physiological effects in sufferers. By definition, this is a disease. However, it is a mistake to use this definition to absolve people from personal responsibility for their problems. You can contract a disease through questionable behavior, after all. Just because someone has an affliction does not mean that they had no control over the condition.
Fair enough.
[quote=“Yayyywork”]
People go to prison for being alcoholics?
That part was more about the treatment of addicts in general
I don’t care what the DSM IV says, alcoholism, sex addiction, cronic fapping, etc…these aren’t diseases. It’s an out for weak willed people to cling to instead of manning up and facing their problems. Cancer is a god damn disease.
i think the argument is that some people are naturally predisposed to alcoholism as well as the other -isms you mentioned similar to how some people are naturally predisposed to getting cancer.
many people with cancer did things in their life that enabled cancer. not everyone but many people.
so if cancer is your own fault, either through genetics or through life choices, then how is it different from alcoholism, which is acquired through genetics or through life choices?
you would’ve had a better chance comparing alcoholism to AIDS or syphillis.
It’s not binary. So what. You’re just talking probability. Some without the identified genes drink too much. Some with the odds stacked against them recover and live productive lives. What is the probability of occurrence when personal responsibility should not be expected?
Yep Matt is right - Indigenous populations are more predisposed to alcoholism (and diabetes (and probably heart disease too)), which is logical given an understanding of human evolution.
I’m sure people in some bloodlines are predisposed to violence too. But should we treat people differently for murder if they have ancestral histories of violence?
No, but if there is a predisposition that can be identified one would assume a society should allocate more resources to education and prevention in those populations. Education is the single most important factor in preventing almost every negative health outcome.
"I don’t care what the DSM IV says, alcoholism, sex addiction, cronic fapping, etc…these aren’t diseases. It’s an out for weak willed people to cling to instead of manning up and facing their problems. Cancer is a god damn disease. "
+1
I’m with STL on this one. I’m not talking about sh*tting on people’s struggle with chemical dependency, I just view it as not a disease. That being said, I understand the other side’s fair point, I think Ohai presented it well and I can agree to disagree on that.
What really gets me is when people advocate a victim mentality that I think hurts the individual who’s actually struggling with it. But that didn’t seem to be what he was getting at.
the future is bright for all kinds of victimhood. one might say we’re in a Renaissance for victimhood. that typically bodes well for societies.
Without Syrian refugees, there would be no AAPL for me to tout here.
thread was about refugees …
What are you crying about now?? 
I don’t think that alcoholism and addiction is a disesase the way cancer and influenza is. And even when someone gets a disease like syphilis, or Hep C, or even the common cold, one can certainly ask whether the person did anything unadvised to contract it and take that into consideration.
So calling something a disease doesn’t let people off the hook for culpability in their situation.
Nonetheless, there are enough similarities between addictions and some diseases that an epidemiological perspective can help when analyzing it and thinking about treatment and public policy. Part of the issue is that people’s capacity to exit from addiction are different from their capacities to avoid getting into it, so although we might say that getting addicted was some kind of moral or human failing, the inability to become unaddicted is not a moral failing of the same magnitude, since chemical changes in the brain and the body impair or degrade the ability to make independent choices. And staying clean can also require extracting oneself from social circles that are effectively contagious, and this is difficult for the same reason that maintaining quarrantines among social groups are.
The disease model is more of a perspective for treating individuals and groups that has some use than a definition of what alcoholism or addiction is. Even if it is a disease, one can still make moral judgements about how people got it, so those who want to prioritize feeling superior can still do so. People often don’t like the idea of using a disease model because it makes these problems seem random the way catching a cold seems random, but if you look at the situation in an epidemiological light, even things like catching colds or AIDS or stuff like that are not random and still link to conscious choices that people make.
I think the real issue is that a lot of these addictions stimulate parts of the brain that are primarily emotional an connected to basic drives like eating and sex. These are things that are powerful enough to override the more rational parts of our brains, which is one reason they are so hard to extract yourself from.