The term addict is often perceived as stigmatizing. Yet there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the word addict–we use similar terms like diabetic, asthmatic, and epileptic. It is not the term “addict” that is stigmatized but the condition of addiction. Addict will cease to stigmatize when addiction is no longer stigmatized. In my experience, what matters to most people is how you treat them, not what you call them.

I would fully agree that the term “addict” should never be used to reduce someone to a label, as if that is all you need to know about that person. That kind of labeling is very harmful and dehumanizing. Identifying someone as a felon, an immigrant, a refugee, an orphan, etc. removes their humanity. It becomes easy to forget that this person is someone’s child, someone’s parent, a human being.

Instead of addict, we are told to use terms such as people who use drugs (PWUD) or people with substance use disorder (PWSUD). I am not sure that those terms are any better; they are still labels that permit us to forget the person’s humanity and suffering. Being identified as a PWUD does not invite less scorn from the public, nor does it buy a lighter sentence from the courts. 

Importantly, people affected by addiction usually self-identify as “addicts.” I would point out that Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was named by alcoholics who never had an issue with being called alcoholics. Nobody has ever proposed changing AA’s name to “People with Alcohol Use Disorder Anonymous.”

I avoid the word addict whenever I sense it may be taken in a hurtful way. However, I believe addict is a perfectly fine and useful word, as long as we do not use it to dehumanize or to demean. It seems to me that trying so hard to avoid the term addict actually sends the wrong signal that addiction is a condition people SHOULD be ashamed of.  One goal of my book is to educate people that addiction is a disease and not something to be ashamed of.

Hurtful words lose their sting when people refuse to be upset by them. Terms like “gay” or “queer” were originally intended to be insults. Instead of avoiding unkind terms, the homosexual and allied communities embraced these terms to normalize them. That’s why we have “Gay Pride.” Today, regardless of whether or not you approve of alternate sexual lifestyles, calling someone “gay” or “queer” has lost its sting. I believe that if we use addict as a normal word, it will also become less hurtful.