IS ADDICTION TRULY A BRAIN DISEASE?

in science •  7 years ago 

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It is important to answer the obvious question that pops into mind when dealing with addiction, which is clearly whether or not it is a kind of disease.
Some organization have had different opinions from which the majority turn out to be that addiction is a disease.
They say,

Addiction is defined as an intense, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug resort and use, and exhibiting disregard for the harmful consequences.
It is considered a brain disease because drug use manipulate the brain; they alter its structure and its mode of work.
These changes can be long term and can lead to self destructive acts ”.

You don't expect everyone to agree.
Some people insist that every major concept of the addiction as a disease is baseless scientifically. They further insist that this also true for alcohol and drug addiction.

To treat this issue effectively, we need to fully understand the idea of a person, and the setup of human mind.
Gathering full knowledge of these factors give rise to “dual motive conflict theory”, which produces a better sketch of what addiction truly is.
From that perspective we can understand why addiction is a vigorous, problematic habit and not some kind of prototypical "disease", but why in the most extreme case when it goes beyond a person's control it might be necessary to characterize it as such.

THE PRIMARY PROCESS MIND AND THE DELIBRATIVE MIND

Only a subset of our minds are devoted to self-conscious deliberative reflection as revealed by analysis of human mental architecture reveals . Humans also possess a procedural-system that allows us to engage in complex behaviors like walking. (When you give it a thought, you realize that the mechanism involved in the steps you take is unknown to you. You only know it is possible for you to walk around ).
Humans also posses an experiential mind, which give us ability to experience things via sensations and perceptions, to develop urges and desires, to feel emotions like fear or joy. We can fuse these various processes together and give them a collective name primary processes because they happen quickly and are relatively automated actions that happen devoid of self-consciousness or deliberative effort. Primary process can also be found in creatures like dogs.

A delibrative mind refer to the capicity to verbally reflect on ones own experience and report on that experience.
The Deliberative Mind (secondary processes), in contrast, operates largely with concentrated effort, uses verbal reasoning, justification and argumentation, and operates over extended time frames from minutes to days to weeks to years, even decades.

An illustration that explains perfectly the difference between primary mind and the deliberative mind. iis seeing a morsel of meat and having the self-reflective, deliberative thought, “there is a piece of meat before me, I wonder if I should much it.”

FINALLY

This analysis put us up to effectively approach the question about whether or not addiction is a disease. Speaking from a general concept, addiction is not a disease because there usually isn’t any “alteration" of brain biology.
Biological malfunctions arechanges or features of true disease. However, when there seems to be important brain alteration and it is often uncontrollable by the deliberative mind. That addiction is a disease is evident by the fact that these changes or alteration require medication.

So it is safe to say that an addiction is a vigorous habit that enables the primary process system to override the deliberative system.

The fundamental essence of addiction is when the primary process is way insistent that it cannot be equalized with positive deliberative decision making. And so, this plays out in a way that there are serious consequences, and the individual experience much conflict about it.
The deliberative mind being overpowered by the primary process mind is practically what meant when an addict admit that they could not help it.

Back to the morsel of meat now. A person might begin to reflect on the unhealthy results of eating meat and want to apply constraint. This is the Deliberative Mind at work, applying reasons. Eventually consensus is reached and meat is left alone. The Primary Process Mind remain inactive at that point. But, say a week later, when the said person gets a craving, and all the stimulus cues are pointing to munch meat, then the Primary Process Mind jumps into action, the thought of harm is quickly forgotten and meat ends up finding its way down their throat.

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Thanks for sharing