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POLE: Do you think addiction is a disease or a choice?

While ACTING on the desire to use substances is definately a choice, I believe that people are predisposed to carry the desire genetically.

🙂
 
No addiction starts immediately. Whether a person is predisposed or not, he or she still has to make the choice to start down that road. A person doesn't become an alcoholic with the first drink. A person becomes an alcoholic by making a series of choices, through weakness, to seek comfort from a chemical rather than from stepping back and looking at the problem.

It's a choice.

ZV
 
It is a combination of both. A coke addict made the decision to try coke that first time, but the urges he/she gets to do coke afterwards are the major reason for their continued use of the drug. Also, consider that the addict did not know what they were getting themselves into, most addicts think they are stronger than the addiction before they ever start using the drug.

And in reply to the most above mine, I think that is not true in all cases. As with my example of cocaine, the drug has an enormous physical hold on you after the first time you use it.
 
addiction is a disease that begins with a choice. then the choice occurs repeatedly and becomes uncontrollable to the user. that's when it's a disease -- when the person cannot pull away due to withdrawal or other extreme consequences.
 
Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
No addiction starts immediately. Whether a person is predisposed or not, he or she still has to make the choice to start down that road. A person doesn't become an alcoholic with the first drink. A person becomes an alcoholic by making a series of choices, through weakness, to seek comfort from a chemical rather than from stepping back and looking at the problem.

It's a choice.

ZV
Click to expand...

Not all diseases start out immediately, AIDS from HIV is a result of action. Lung cancer, emphysema from smoking same deal.
 
Originally posted by: tami
addiction is a disease that begins with a choice. then the choice occurs repeatedly and becomes uncontrollable to the user. that's when it's a disease -- when the person cannot pull away due to withdrawal or other extreme consequences.
Click to expand...

yep
 
Addiction is its own thing.

A disease is "A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms."
Addiction does not fit into this category. There is a choice componant. ie. you know heroin and smoking is addictive so you avoid it.

At the same time addiction causes choice. it is still a decision to smoke or eat. There is a stimulant initiating the wanting of the addiction...but it is still not a clear cut choice.

Addiction is a stimulant 🙂

Although...if you think obesety is a disease...addiction is.

Edit. Hehe...tami said it well.
 
Disease. Choice is an illusion. Every choice is physically based in your brain somehow or another, anyhow. Therefore any choice you are presented with is naturally already decided (you just don't know). This is somewhat symptomatic of a disease in that you have no real choice (along with it being biological and thus physical in nature), so I would suggest that is the best choice. Determinism, baby 🙂
 
Originally posted by: chrisms
As with my example of cocaine, the drug has an enormous physical hold on you after the first time you use it.
Click to expand...

er...what? ive done coke more than i should admit back in the younger days, and that never happened to me. once this weekend, skip a few weekends then do it 5 days in a row, etc. etc. very sporadic. i never had the craving or withdrawals after the 1st or 15th time. now if i chose to do it every day, im sure i would be addicted right now.

i think people get hooked on the fun, before the drug. once it isnt so much fun anymore, theyre in too deep, and they cant quit.

 
Originally posted by: shimsham
Originally posted by: chrisms
As with my example of cocaine, the drug has an enormous physical hold on you after the first time you use it.
Click to expand...

er...what? ive done coke more than i should admit back in the younger days, and that never happened to me. once this weekend, skip a few weekends then do it 5 days in a row, etc. etc. very sporadic. i never had the craving or withdrawals after the 1st or 15th time. now if i chose to do it every day, im sure i would be addicted right now.

i think people get hooked on the fun, before the drug. once it isnt so much anymore, theyre in too deep, but they cant quit.
Click to expand...

You were snorting weak coke. And you kind of contradict yourself by saying how many times you did it, the space between your use isn't really saying much because it is an expensive drug and few can use it every day.

Everyone I know who has done coke once asks for more later.
 
Originally posted by: chrisms
Originally posted by: shimsham
Originally posted by: chrisms
As with my example of cocaine, the drug has an enormous physical hold on you after the first time you use it.
Click to expand...

er...what? ive done coke more than i should admit back in the younger days, and that never happened to me. once this weekend, skip a few weekends then do it 5 days in a row, etc. etc. very sporadic. i never had the craving or withdrawals after the 1st or 15th time. now if i chose to do it every day, im sure i would be addicted right now.

i think people get hooked on the fun, before the drug. once it isnt so much anymore, theyre in too deep, but they cant quit.
Click to expand...

You were snorting weak coke. And you kind of contradict yourself by saying how many times you did it, the space between your use isn't really saying much because it is an expensive drug and few can use it every day.
Click to expand...

uhhh no not weak. unless you call weak thinking you can do anything, the old i can fly cliche. i know bunk, and that wasnt it.

what does space between uses have to do with the claim you made of after the first time it has an enourmous physical hold? the point was i used it way too many times, and still no addiction. the longest binge was one week. ill admit, for the next few days after that, it felt odd not doing it, but more of a habit than "i cant deal without my blow today". so, if it only takes once for the enormous physical hold, then why am i coke free today?
 
I'm sorry I'm having trouble believing someone who has used coke so many times, even for a week straight, when they tell me they were never addicted. Either weak coke, a bad memory, or a resistence to addiction, because in my personal experience and what I have seen from those around me, you get physically sick without the drug. I'll admit it isn't as bad after the first time as it is after you've been doing it a while, but it is still there.
 
Originally posted by: illustri
Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
No addiction starts immediately. Whether a person is predisposed or not, he or she still has to make the choice to start down that road. A person doesn't become an alcoholic with the first drink. A person becomes an alcoholic by making a series of choices, through weakness, to seek comfort from a chemical rather than from stepping back and looking at the problem.

It's a choice.

ZV
Click to expand...
Not all diseases start out immediately, AIDS from HIV is a result of action. Lung cancer, emphysema from smoking same deal.
Click to expand...
Smoking is an addiction and a choice. The diseases from that choice are therefore inadmissable.

Furthermore, I never said that anything that starts gradually is a choice. Your inability to follow logic does not invalidate my argument.

As for the cocaine argument that someone else made, BS. The choice was made to use the drug the first time. Without that _choice_, no addiction can take place. A coke addiction is still the direct result of a choice, albeit faster than usual.

ZV
 
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