Law and addiction: How new science is impacting the justice system

Recognizing that addiction is a habit in the https://www.inkl.com/news/sober-house-rules-a-comprehensive-overview scientific sense of the word makes clear that recovery is possible with deliberate action to change, which reverses the changes to the brain. Addiction is considered a disease largely as a way to remove stigma, guilt, moral blame, and shame from those who use substances or certain behaviors repeatedly to feel intense euphoria and as a way to encourage humane treatment. It is also viewed as a disease in order to facilitate insurance coverage of any treatment. With repetition, these bursts of dopamine tell the brain to value drugs more than natural rewards, and the brain adjusts so that the reward circuit becomes less sensitive to natural rewards. This can make a person feel depressed or emotionally “flat” at times they aren’t using drugs.1 If natural rewards are a plate of broccoli, drugs are a huge bowl of ice cream, and broccoli is even less appetizing after ice cream. Blaming and punishing individuals with addiction only serves to further stigmatize and marginalize them.

Biological Risk Factors for Addiction

• The opposing view, which considers drug addiction a disease, highlights how addiction can alter brain chemistry and function, suggesting that it’s not merely a matter of choice.
• Substances like alcohol, drugs, and even behaviors such as gambling flood the brain with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that creates a feeling of euphoria.
• It’s not just about the substance itself, but about how that substance interacts with an individual’s unique makeup and life circumstances.
• Even if you’re not severely traumatized, chronic stress can lead you to self-soothe with substances.
• The disease model provides a compassionate framework, reducing stigma and encouraging more people to seek help by viewing addiction as a treatable medical condition.
• While the initial decision to use a substance might be a conscious one, addiction itself is not.

Diseases are not always curable, but they can often be managed with appropriate treatment and lifestyle changes. Understanding how addiction develops shifts the focus from blaming people for their initial choice to supporting them through undoing the changes to their brain chemistry that perpetuate addiction. This paves the way for effective treatment that addresses the underlying causes and empowers people to regain control over their lives. Our growing mental health awareness is reducing stigma around seeking help. And communities that promote healthy lifestyles and provide strong social networks create environments that support healing. Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing disorder that involves compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences.

Symptoms of Addiction

For many, substances become a form of self-medication, a way to numb emotional pain or escape from overwhelming thoughts. It’s like using a band-aid to cover a gaping wound – it might provide temporary relief, but it doesn’t address the underlying issue. Stress, trauma, poverty, and even social influences can sober house all increase a person’s susceptibility to addiction. It’s a complex interplay of nature and nurture, where our genes load the gun, but our environment pulls the trigger. Picture your brain as a bustling city, with neurotransmitters acting as the messengers zipping along neural highways.

Environmental Influences

Holistic approaches are gaining traction too, recognizing that addiction affects the whole person, not just the brain. These approaches might include nutrition counseling, exercise programs, mindfulness practices, and even creative therapies. The prefrontal cortex, our brain’s CEO, starts taking a backseat to the more primitive, impulse-driven parts of our brain.

• As we peel back the layers of addiction, we find that it manifests in five key elements.
• These risk factors can be broadly divided into biological and environmental categories.
• The third point of note is that a person’s risk of addiction rises based on hereditary factors.
• Instead, it perpetuates a cycle of shame and guilt that can make it even more difficult for individuals to seek help.
• We do not and have never accepted fees for referring someone to a particular center.

Just as these diseases alter biological processes and require ongoing management, addiction disrupts brain chemistry and requires long-term treatment. When someone first tries drugs or alcohol, it’s a decision they’ve made to ingest a certain substance. Some people believe that because of their decision to try a substance; they are now responsible for the way addiction can take control of the mind and body. While early decisions made to ingest substances are certainly a deliberate action in the first stages of misuse, the way drugs change the person’s brain chemistry soon becomes out of their control. Just as with all chronic diseases, addiction can never be fully “cured.” Commonly, addiction is compared to cancer where many people can go into “remission” but never be fully cured.

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Can Addiction Be Considered a Disease? Exploring the Science and Debate

That is one of the fundamental things about the disease of addiction.” This behaviour should sound familiar. I would start by acknowledging that a reasonable degree of dependence on technology is now a fact of life. It provides incomparable levels of information, convenience and support in our daily lives. The level of this dependence varies from person to person but the problem starts when dependence changes course and becomes an addiction which disrupts lives. Therefore, it becomes necessary to distinguish healthy usage and problematic usage.

Disease or Choice, Does it Matter?

These views don’t just promote discrimination against those who are struggling, but hinder their steps toward recovery. If you’re struggling with both addiction and your mental health, it’s important to find a specialized program that can effectively treat both at the same time. Childhood trauma due to neglect, abuse, or household dysfunction can impact the experiences we have later in life.

Medications can help manage withdrawal symptoms, reduce cravings, and restore balance to the brain’s chemistry. It’s like giving a boost to the brain’s natural healing processes, helping it regain its footing after being knocked off balance by addiction. Treatment for addiction can include a combination of therapy, medication-assisted treatment, and support groups. Therapy can help individuals address the underlying issues that contribute to their addiction and develop healthy coping mechanisms.

The Value of Escapist Entertainment in a Complex World

That act applies to the tax code, and since that time the Federal response to drug abuse has been the purview of the Treasury Department, rather than the Department of Justice. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the successor to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), is an arm of the Treasury Department. The activities of that organization and the criminal-justice system help to establish the current situation in which societally imposed penalties are applied to those said to be suffering from a disease.

The brain is always changing and adapting to experience—even now, as you read this. Habits are a kind of mental shortcut, fast-tracking the neural connections involved in an activity so that you don’t need to consciously think out every step. Unfortunately, that wired-in efficiency is what makes habits hard to break. Because addiction is such a complex phenomenon, there are many theories about what addiction is.

Over time, the brain becomes less responsive to dopamine, leading to the need for more drugs or alcohol to achieve the same effect. The brain also undergoes other changes, such as an increase in stress and anxiety when drugs or alcohol are not present. These changes contribute to the compulsive drug-seeking behavior that is characteristic of addiction. I think one of the biggest challenges is that addiction exists in this gray area—it’s a disease, yes, but it also involves personal responsibility.