The most straightforward way to demonstrate that addiction is a disease is to witness how medications transform lives. I was a family physician at the time the opioid epidemic began 25 years ago. I witnessed patients I knew to be hardworking decent people who got hurt on the job, got started on pain meds, and lost control for various reasons. Their lives unraveled, they lost their jobs, became alienated from their family, etc. However, treatment with suboxone turned their lives around. Once again they were healthy, productive, hardworking decent people. Such stories of health ravaged but restored with medications would defy explanation if addiction isn’t a disease. Medications cannot turn immoral people into moral people. 

Another way to show that addiction is a disease is to show that addiction behaves just like other chronic diseases, such as asthma or type 2 diabetes. If we compare alcoholism (a classic addiction) with type 2 diabetes (a classic disease) we find that:

1. Both diabetes and alcoholism run in families.
2. Both conditions depend on where and how you grow up. Diabetes is much more common in Alabama or Mississippi than Colorado or Utah while alcoholism is more common in Wisconsin than Utah.
3. Both conditions depend on your lifestyle. For example, fast food, pop, and no exercise sets you up for diabetes. People who drink with every social event exhibiting unhealthy drinking patterns are more likely to become alcoholic.
4. Both conditions affect multiple organ systems. Diabetes affects your kidneys, blood vessels, nerves, etc. Alcohol affects your pancreas, liver, brain, etc.
5. Both conditions involve inability to control consumption. Diabetics cannot control how much sugar and calories they consume while alcoholics cannot control how much alcohol they consume.

 

Given the above, why would diabetes be considered a disease but not alcoholism?