Is Addiction A Disease

Some say addiction is a disease not a choice, what do you think? With addiction there is no physiological malfunction in the brain. Addiction is a choice; in the moment. It is not a disease like cancer or diabetes. Addiction is not a disease that comes unexpected, it is what you choose to do, it is a choice. Addiction is chosen not by the brain does it come unexpectedly. “In a true disease, some part of the body is in a state of abnormal physiological functioning, and this causes the undesirable symptoms”(Slate). Such as cancer, it has bad cells and diabetes it is low insulin, the ones affected by physiological malfunction cannot be cured on their own they have to have medical treatment, unlike addiction. Addiction you can just stop. Disease …show more content…
Like eating a whole cake yourself, it taste great in the moment but later you regret it because it was not good for you. When someone is taking the drug they are thinking that day or the moment would be better with the drugs. It would be saying smoking cigarettes is a disease, it is not, it is an addiction. Say you smoked twenty cigarettes a day for a year, that is sixty minutes a day. “You think you would rather have that sixty minutes smoke free but you do not choose sixty minutes at a time you think of the moment and that is what make addiction so hard, you are not thinking ahead of time you are thinking, choosing, in the moment to do that one thing” (Gillis). Addiction is not a true disease. Real diseases worsen if left untreated. “A patient with cancer is not cured if locked in a jail cell but someone addicted to drugs or alcohol is cured” (Holden). ”Addiction is self-acquired and …show more content…
“The changes in the brain are not abnormal, people change their behavior in spite of the fact that their brain has changed in response to repeated substance use” (Slate). Kinda like when someone changes their mind about what they like just because someone else does or does not like it. “The first step to developing addiction, like smoking that leads to lung cancer, is voluntary, no one makes you” (Nentwig). Real true disease are not voluntary like addiction, you cannot just say hey I want cancer but you can say hey I want to be an addict. “Like other disease addiction can be treated, except real disease are going to be cured every time” (Gould). “There is evidence willpower can be crucial in beating addiction, yet it does not work for cancer, pneumonia or malaria, real diseases” (Lewis). There is no way you can just say you want your cancer or malaria to go away and it be gone, but you can have willpower to beat your addiction. Willpower will not cure real diseases. They say it is voluntary at first then turns into a disease, which has no correlation because you chose to start taking the drugs, you became addicted by choice. Addiction is a disease not a choice as some are saying. Addiction is not a disease, it is what you chose to do to. It is a choice because there is no abnormality in the brain. It is something in the moment, your choice at the moment which starts the addiction and it is treatable and curable unlike real disease