I do believe that changing how people,
including the medical community, define
addiction (for example, vs. using "less stigmatizing" words like "habituate" or "tolerance" or "withdrawal" etc. —
when all three of those are part and parcel of addiction), would go a long way in everyone understanding — and treating — the disease.
The AMA defines addiction as a disease. This is fact. So, why does pharma/law promote antiquated beliefs that essentially
blame the sick and the diseased as somehow having
moral failings if they develop the disease of addiction?
Addiction is medically recognized, often treatable disease, like, say, Type 1 diabetes or crohn's. And no legitimate medical disease is
caused by moral failing. (I would say IMO here, but that's a scientific fact.)
Yeah, addiction is complicated. I'm not blaming doctors, per se, unless they're running pill mills. Then they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as the narcotic drug dealers they are.
After all,
nobody denies opioids are lab-created versions of
heroin and
morphine. So, it makes little sense that they shouldn't be handled with exceptional caution — like the highly addictive narcotics that they are. One isn't less "habit forming" or "tolerance forming" or "withdrawal inducing" than the other just because it's made in a lab! That's just common sense. Or it should be.
In my humble and largely self-educated opinion, which happens to jibe with the (former) U.S. Attorney General.
Per The Los Angeles Times, November 2016 Article "
U.S. surgeon general issues ‘a new call to action’ on addiction":
When Dr. Vivek Murthy left his Massachusetts hospital to become U.S. surgeon general, the nurses who had known him since he was a resident had a parting plea: Do something about addiction. On Thursday, Murthy tried to make good on that request with the release of a first-of-its-kind report calling for “a cultural shift in how we think about addiction.”
“For far too long, too many in our country have viewed addiction as a moral failing,” Murthy said in the report. “It is a chronic illness that we must approach with the same skill and compassion with which we approach heart disease, diabetes and cancer.” The report comes at a time of great concern about addiction and uncertainty about how the Trump administration will respond to it. Drug overdoses have surpassed car accidents as a cause of death in recent years, a surge driven by the opioid epidemic.
(emphasis mine)
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-oxycontin-full-coverage/#surgeon_general
As my mom would say about just about anything that happens in this world, "Everything's related, but some things are more closely related than others."
eace:
