The push to regard addiction as a disease is well-intentioned—driven by a desire to lessen stigma—but fails to account for the many facets and facts of the condition.

Addiction-as-disease is in some ways a thoroughly American idea. It ties together how we approach medicine (with a precisely defined target and a definitive program to fight it) and our proudly ...

Addiction has three main characteristics that cause it to be considered a disease.First, it has a lifelong course characterized by frequent relapses, cross addiction and a common set of behavioral ...

The mystery of addiction — what it is, what causes it and how to end it — threads through most of our lives. Experts estimate that one in 10 Americans is dependent on alcohol and other drugs ...

The idea that addiction is some kind of disease is unquestionably the dominant view in government, medical, and most scientific circles around the world. So dominant in the West, for example, that ...

Lewis’s argument, outlined in his 2015 book, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease (PublicAffairs), is that dependence on substances and other behavioral patterns are learned via ...

Science calls addiction a "brain disease," but critics say that label fails to show that addiction is a learning problem with roots in both biology and behavior. No matter who is talking about ...

The National Institutes for Drug Addiction describe addiction as “a chronic, relapsing brain disease.”But a number of scholars, myself included, question the usefulness of the concept of ...

After decades of growing acceptance, the concept that addiction is a medical disease (more exactly, a chronic brain disease) is suddenly being linked to the drug war—and being challenged.

The opioid abuse epidemic is a full-fledged item in the 2016 campaign, and with it questions about how to combat the problem and treat people who are addicted.

Addiction as a disease is an ongoing discussion; but it has clear symptoms, is chronic in nature, and terminal if left untreated. All debates aside, addiction is headline-worthy.

Then came the idea that addiction is a disease: a medical illness like tuberculosis, diabetes or Alzheimer's disease. That meant that people with addictions weren't bad, they were sick.