Is Addiction a Disease?
I entered treatment at age 21, having been able to drink alcohol legally for just six months. My consequences seemed minor compared to the people with whom I shared my treatment room. I had never gotten divorced, never had a DUI, never been fired for drinking, and I never drank in the morning (that is to say, I never woke up and started drinking). I had done cocaine, but I had never smoked crack. I was never homeless and I had never spent a night in a shelter.
When I got to treatment, I was presented with the idea that I had a disease—the disease of addiction. In my mind I laughed. At the ripe ‘ole age of 21, I was pretty sure I knew better than to believe something like that. The treatment team presented me with pamphlets and booklets. Out of self-righteous contempt, I didn’t read them.
Then it came my turn to tell my story to the rest of the patients and my therapist. After the story, my therapist asked, “Nate, is there anything that you are struggling with, anything that you are hearing that you are having a problem accepting?”
I replied, “Well, I understand that I have a problem with alcohol and drugs. But I don’t really believe that addiction is a disease or that I have that disease.”
The reply from my therapist made me laugh at first but then stung me in my prideful core. She said, “Nate, if you’re not an alcoholic and drug addict, if you don’t have a disease, then you’re just an @$$hole. If your self will was completely at fault for allowing your body to consume the drugs and alcohol, to behave in the ways that you did, to treat your family the way you did, then you are just an @$$hole.”
The next morning in group I introduced myself not with customary, “My name is Nate, I’m an alcoholic,” but “My name is Nate, and I’m an @$$hole.”
It didn’t have the right ring to it. So, as simple as it sounds, I realized then that perhaps it was better to believe what my therapist was telling me. I began reading the pamphlets and booklets and found out that the American Medical Association classified addiction as a disease, along with a host of other organizations and people who knew better than the 21 year-old Nate did. I learned that my alcoholism and addiction would only get worse over time if not treated, that it would eventually take my life if left untreated, but that if I allowed it to be treated, it would go in to remission. Sounds like a disease to me.
It was one of my first lessons in the danger of contempt prior to investigation. I had fought most everything up to that point in my life, if only in my thoughts. I know that one of the reasons that I have been able to stay sober since then is that I consciously stopped trying to figure out why recovery wouldn’t work for me and started focusing on how I could make it work for me.
Today the principle that I try to practice is open-mindedness. Every day I have to remember to be teachable, even when my first reaction is to think that I know better. The day I stop learning is the day I stop growing.