Disease Vs. Choice Debate Over Addiction

Disease Vs. Choice Debate over Addiction
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Disease Vs. Choice Debate over Addiction
The debate concerning whether addiction is a disease or a result of an individual's choice has confused healthcare for a long time. While one side deems the health condition a disease like other healthcare challenges, the other section suggests addiction is based on an individual's choice (Frank & Nagel, 2017). Addiction is a condition associated with substance dependence resulting from the abuse of such substances. Continuous abuse of substances gears the brain functions towards craving for more of it to enable normal mental activities. Thus, addicted people can feel less motivated to complete daily tasks before consuming the drug. Scholars have developed multiple theories such as broad conceptualization, Etiological, and Relapse and recovery theories to explain addiction processes (Bae, 2017). However, a common element in the theories is that they all acknowledge excessive use of a product or involvement in an activity such as sex that causes dependence. Given that, addiction is a choice that people make to consume or do an action beyond normal limits.
Addiction results from unrestrained excessive appetite that leads to dependence on a given activity. For example, if a person does not control his sex appetite within reasonable limits, there can get sex addiction. Similarly, those who have a drug addiction, like excessive alcohol consumption, first fail to restrain the craving desires to take such drinks without control. Accordingly, addiction is based on an individual's choice because people can maintain their use of a substance with healthy limits. According to general conceptualization theory, one may start a behaviour for the sake of pleasure, but the activity's continuity makes it a necessity through operant conditioning (Silverman, Holtyn, & Toegel, 2019). Operant condition is a psychological concept implying that behaviours receiving positive rewards become reinforced and have higher chances of reoccurring in the future. Therefore, according to the theory, such rewards maintain and amplify due to operant conditioning processes in the brain. Hence, addiction is a choice because a person can decide which behaviour to reinforce.
The broad conceptualization approach also posits that everybody would develop an addiction to such things if people had the same unrestrained access to excessive appetitive consumption. Therefore, the concept suggests that people have equal chances of becoming addicted to substances. Moreover, the theory highlights that environment can constrain individuals' behaviors (Bae, 2017). Avoiding or becoming an addict depends on how a person responds to environmental factors surrounding them. For instance, people associating with drunkards can quickly get into their drinking habits and get addicted. However, the same people also have chances of disassociating themselves from such group and choose another company with noble characters.
Additionally, Cognitive functions and memory also play critical roles in developing addiction (Wang, 2020). Consuming a substance repeatedly leads to cognitive biases because people become accustomed...