In this day and age, the stigmatization of mental illness is still prevalent. This includes the illness of addiction. Some of the attitudes towards addiction e.g. Addicts are weak, lazy, have no morals, criminals and are fundamentally bad people to name a few. To add to this, there is a general lack of empathy for addicts due to frustration and anger towards addicts. This is understandable if one considers the actions of addicts while under the influence of their drug of choice and/or when trying to obtain money to sustain their addiction. How can the hurt and pain caused by someone who is addicted be due to an illness? An why knowing about the pain and hurt continue to do this. It just seems unfair to put all of this unacceptable behaviour down to an illness. The disease model seems to let addicts off the hook and alleviate them of accountability of their actions.
Having someone in your life who is in active addiction, one tries to make sense of all the above and we frame it in a way that makes the most sense. This is the reason when someone with an addiction seeks help the involvement of the people close to the person, is so important. Not only does the person with the addiction, awareness needs to be raised about the disease of addiction, but so does the family and loved ones too. Sometimes those around the addict are resistant to the concept of addiction being a disease due to what they have been through with the addict and now they need to be understanding of their illness? This does not happen overnight. With more insight into addiction your view changes and thus your attitude.
So whatever you believe now based on your experiences with addiction the fact is there is overwhelming evidence to suggest addiction is a disease and can be treated. Organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous were claiming that addiction was a disease since 1935. Millions of member of organizations like AA who suffer from addiction have managed to arrest their illness of addiction and live reasonability fulfilling lives. Since then with the development in science, it can be proven what they were claiming back then.
So if addiction is a disease addict are sick people who need to become better and not bad people who need to become good. This does not mean that addicts do not do “bad” things when they in active addiction, however, their behaviour changes over time when they start a process of recovering from their illness. Once the people close to the addict make this shift in their understanding about addiction, they can let go of the guilt and responsibility for the addict’s consumption of their drug of choice. They understand they are not the cause of the addiction and are not responsible for the addict becoming better. It is up to the addict to recover from their illness. This is so important for people close to the addict, to shift the responsibility for getting better from them to the addict and hold them accountable for getting better. Once the addict knows they have an illness and that it can be treated they are now responsible for their illness. This insight can be empowering for the addict and relieving for the loved ones of the addict.
SHARING IS CARING
