Addiction & Recovery

But I will point out that scientific training in say chemistry might not take you far when dealing with economy.

I cant take credit for the work of Marc Lewis, but to my mind a lot of what goes under the guise of medical science also play a part in the business model of corporations that produce medications. Which is why the same corporations will fund a huge amount of studies and publish a lot of them.

I also think that the concept of disease is quite elastic if you mix the common use and the more narrowly defined uses in different medical traditions. If you also consider that almost no mental health issues are fully understood, you have fertile grounds for misunderstandings of the significance of concepts like "disease".

In addiction theory there is a narrow version of the disease model, the patophysiological understanding of addiction, that is clearly defined but very weakly supported.

It is perhaps interesting to discuss definitions of disease. But what if you like me reject the narrow patophysiological understanding of addiction, but nevertheless find that a lot of physiology is relevant for understanding addiction. Then you dont want to reject the disease model in all cases, but neither do you want to reject the social or psychological factors that seem relevant.

I think Marc Lewis book is a good attempt at progress, but it is not very tightly argued and a lot more work is needed before we have something approaching a full understanding of addiction. There is a lot more to do before Lewis views can be confirmed or rejected by the general public. And it is not just up to him to do that work. And pretending that the eliminative materialists have all the answers strikes me as something quite ignorant.

I would also point out that I havent seen anything that makes it impossible to accommodate Lewis' view within the normal bio-psycho-social framework that dominates current psychiatric thinking. This model might not satisfy your desire for a clear cut answer to issues in mental health or addiction treatment. But it is what we currently have to work with.

You seem to be under the impression that a lot of current debate could be ended if only people were provided with a few links to a list of medical definitions. Is that something you really believe?

But we are getting a bit far from talking about meetings, sponsors and sober days and I fear that this discussion is going to be shut down soon. The "higher powers" arround here have a tendency to dislike non-AA discussions.