Who’s “we”?

~ Jason Schwartz

many-and-fewThis article has been forwarded to me by several people. Its author has been writing a series of articles that seek to redefine addiction and recovery.

As Eve Tushnet recently observed, “There’s another narrative, though, which is emerging at sites like The Fix and Substance.com.” This sentence is representative of this alternative narative:

“The addiction field has struggled with defining recovery at least as long and as fiercely as it has with defining addiction: Since we can’t even agree on whether it’s a disease, a learning disorder or a criminal choice, it becomes even harder to figure out what it means when we say someone has overcome an addiction problem.”

But are “we” really unable to agree that addiction is a disease? Who’s “we”?

It’s not unlike suggestions that there’s wide disagreement on climate change.

“Since we can’t even agree on whether it’s a disease, a learning disorder or a criminal choice, it becomes even harder to figure out what it means when we say someone has overcome an addiction problem.” “. . . just so you know, the consensus has not been met among scientists on this issue. Or that CO2 actually plays a part in this global warming phenomenon as they’ve come up with somehow.”
Health organizations that call addiction a disease or illness:

  • American Society of Addiction Medicine
  • American Medical Association
  • American Psychiatric Association
  • American Hospital Association
  • American Public Health Association
  • National Association of Social Workers
  • American College of Physicians
  • National Institute of Health
  • National Alliance on Mental Illness
  • World Health Organization
 Scientific organizations that recognize human caused climate change:

  • American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • American Astronomical Society
  • American Chemical Society
  • American Geophysical Union
  • American Institute of Physics
  • American Meteorological Society
  • American Physical Society
  • Federation of American Scientists
  • Geological Society of America
  • National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Health organizations that dispute the dispute the disease model:

  • I can’t find any. If you have some that are similar in stature to those above, send them to me.
 Scientific organizations that dispute human caused climate change:

  • None, according to Wikipedia.

To be sure, there are people who don’t accept the disease model, some very smart people, but they represent a small minority of the experts. (The frequent casting as David vs. Goliath should be a clue.) And, if you look at their arguments, you’ll find other motives (I’m not suggesting nefarious motives) like protecting stigmatization, defending free will from “attacks”, discrediting AA and advancing psychodynamic approaches, resisting stigma and emphasizing environmental factors.

Attending to some of their concerns makes the disease model and treatment stronger, not weaker. Lots of diseases have failed to do things like adequately acknowledge environmental factors. And, one takeaway from these critics is the importance of being careful about who we characterize as having a disease/disorder explicitly or implicitly (by characterizing them as being in recovery).

Published by Jason Schwartz

I have been an addiction professional and social worker since 1994. I started blogging in 2005 as the Clinical Director at Dawn Farm. I no longer work at Dawn Farm and am now the Director of Behavioral Medicine at a community hospital, and a lecturer at Eastern Michigan University’s School of Social Work. Views expressed here are my own. Keep in mind that the field, the contexts in which the field operates, and my views have changed over time.

2 thoughts on “Who’s “we”?”

  1. There are not one, not two, and not three, but at least four separate questions involved in settling a public-health debate: 1. Where does the evidence point? 2. How much room must remain for debate? 3. What measures can be based on the dominant theory without violating the speech or conscience rights of the minority, or of anyone else? 4. If (yes, sometimes it is a big if, but it is an if) the dominant theory is overturned by new discoveries, will the measures have done irreversible harm or indignity to anyone? All four of these questions must be separated and debated calmly to have any hope of drawing closer to either consensus or truth. Until then, regardless of the issue, the debate is not only not over, it is not even begun.

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