12 Models Of Addiction
Models of Addiction
There are many models that have tried to explain addiction. Here, I will briefly review five of the main models.
Stress-Reduction/Behavioural
Moral-Volitional Model
Personality Model
Dispositional Disease Model
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
Stress-Reduction/Behavioural Model
This is based on the notion that people learn to use alcohol because it helps them cope with stressors, and reduces emotional stress reactions. Use might then become abuse, and then dependence, if drinking is a person’s main coping strategy.
Hence, “Given an individual with no alternative models on which to draw for effective coping behaviours, drug use becomes a learned response for dealing with personal and social problems” (Krivanek, 1995, p20).
Suggested Therapy: Learning alternative ways of coping with stress/emotions.
Moral-Volitional Model
Alcoholism is viewed as volitional, i.e. as a consequence of the exercise of choice, or free will. An alcoholic is thus, in this model, seen as morally weak, or degenerate. This perspective was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1988, in Traynor v Turnage, when it defined alcoholism as “wilful misconduct.”
This model positions alcoholism as caused by a lack of will-power/moral fibre. This implies that the solution to alcoholism is for the alcoholic to impose control and drink less.
Personality Model
This is a psychoanalytically informed model, which “views alcoholism as a symptom of an underlying personality disorder, a disturbance of normal development” (Miller and Kurtz, 1994, p160).
From this perspective, addiction might be seen as “a habitual response and a source of gratification and security, so that when a person becomes addicted, it is not to a chemical, but to an experience” (Peele, S., 1991, p42).
Recommended treatment: psychotherapy/psychoanalysis.
The Disease Model
The disease model views alcoholism as a disease: “Most physicians, counsellors, and psychologists view alcoholism according to the disease
There are many models that have tried to explain addiction. Here, I will briefly review five of the main models.
Stress-Reduction/Behavioural
Moral-Volitional Model
Personality Model
Dispositional Disease Model
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
Stress-Reduction/Behavioural Model
This is based on the notion that people learn to use alcohol because it helps them cope with stressors, and reduces emotional stress reactions. Use might then become abuse, and then dependence, if drinking is a person’s main coping strategy.
Hence, “Given an individual with no alternative models on which to draw for effective coping behaviours, drug use becomes a learned response for dealing with personal and social problems” (Krivanek, 1995, p20).
Suggested Therapy: Learning alternative ways of coping with stress/emotions.
Moral-Volitional Model
Alcoholism is viewed as volitional, i.e. as a consequence of the exercise of choice, or free will. An alcoholic is thus, in this model, seen as morally weak, or degenerate. This perspective was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1988, in Traynor v Turnage, when it defined alcoholism as “wilful misconduct.”
This model positions alcoholism as caused by a lack of will-power/moral fibre. This implies that the solution to alcoholism is for the alcoholic to impose control and drink less.
Personality Model
This is a psychoanalytically informed model, which “views alcoholism as a symptom of an underlying personality disorder, a disturbance of normal development” (Miller and Kurtz, 1994, p160).
From this perspective, addiction might be seen as “a habitual response and a source of gratification and security, so that when a person becomes addicted, it is not to a chemical, but to an experience” (Peele, S., 1991, p42).
Recommended treatment: psychotherapy/psychoanalysis.
The Disease Model
The disease model views alcoholism as a disease: “Most physicians, counsellors, and psychologists view alcoholism according to the disease