ABSTRACT
Despite a recent explosion of illuminating empirical and theoretical research on addiction, the addiction field is divided over some basic conceptual questions. The most fundamental question is whether addiction is a medical disorder. Addiction is currently classified as a mental/psychiatric medical disorder in official diagnostic manuals such as DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013) and ICD-10 (World Health Organization 1992). It is further considered a brain disorder by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), based on observed well-documented neuronal changes in addicts that NIDA interprets as substance-induced damage to the brain’s reward, inhibitory, and other systems (Leshner 1997; Volkow et al. 2016). The NIDA’s position that addiction is a brain disorder (which NIDA terms a “brain disease” despite the fact that such damage does not clearly qualify for the label ‘disease’) is repeated frequently in public statements and shapes research grant awards, so can justifiably be considered the standard current view among psychiatrists and researchers.
