Drugs, Society, and Behavior

Section I

Topic

Addiction Is a Brain Disease, Alan I. Leshner, Issues in Science and Technology, spring 2001.

Article Summary

Recent advances in scientific knowledge increasingly suggest that drug addiction is a brain disease that develops over time. In the article “Addiction Is a Brain Disease”, Alan I. Leshner argues that we must rise above the idea that addicts have "done it to themselves" and develop strategies that are as complex as the problem itself. This brain-based view of addiction has generated substantial controversy, in part because some people wrongly think that it somehow absolves addicts of responsibility for their own behavior. But these people still believe that biological and behavioral explanations are alternative or competing ways to understand this phenomena, when in fact they are integrated and inseparable parts of the picture (Leshner, pp 1314-1316).

Section II: Critiques

Sources of Information

Sally Satel, Tuesday, July 10, 2007: The Human Factor, Filed under: Big Ideas, Health & Medicine, retrieved on March 24, 2009, from: http://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/the-human-factor-2

I select this source because this article discusses about the Drug abuse causes also it describe how to limit the damage. Also the main reason behind this is that in this article author discusses that Addiction isn't a brain disease.

Carlton K. Erickson, Addiction is a Brain Disease: What is the Evidence? Retrieved on March 24, 2009, from: http://www.recoverytoday.net/Mar09/erickson.html

I select this source because this article discusses about the Evidence of Brain Disease which is suppose to be as Addiction. Also the main reason behind this is that in this article author discusses that evidence of brain disease as an Addiction.

Section III. Compare sources

Article 1: The Human Factor

In this article author Sally Satel said that Characterizing addiction as a brain disease misappropriates language more properly used to describe conditions such as multiple sclerosis or schizophrenia—afflictions that are neither brought on by sufferers themselves nor modifiable by their desire to be well (www.american.com). Also, the brain disease rhetoric is fatalistic, implying that users can never fully free themselves of their drug or alcohol problems. Finally, and most important, it threatens to obscure the vast role personal agency plays in perpetuating the cycle of use and relapse to drugs and alcohol.

He also said that telling the public that addiction is a "chronic and relapsing brain disease" suggests that an addict's disembodied brain holds the secrets to understanding and helping him. It implies that medication is necessary and that interventions must be applied directly at ...