Slate's Bizbox
medical examiner: Health and medicine explained.

Medical MisnomerAddiction isn't a brain disease, Congress.

By Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld
Posted Wednesday, July 25, 2007, at 1:36 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

In other words, there is room for other choices. These addicts could go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, enter treatment if they have private insurance, or register at a public clinic if they don't. Self-governance, in fact, is key to the most promising treatments for addiction. For example, relapse prevention therapy helps patients identify cues—often people, places, and things—that reliably trigger a burst of desire to use. Patients rehearse strategies for avoiding the cues if they possibly can and managing the craving when they cannot. In drug courts (a jail-diversion treatment program for nonviolent drug offenders), offenders are sanctioned for continued drug use (perhaps a night or two in jail) and rewarded for cooperation with the program. The judge holds the person, not his brain, accountable for setbacks and progress.

The brave new world of brain scanning figures prominently in the new disease rhetoric. During imaging experiments in which an addict is shown drug paraphernalia, the reward centers in his brain light up like a Christmas tree. It's easy to be misled into believing that these colorful images prove that the addict is helpless to change his behavior. In a powerful experiment, Deena Weisberg, a doctoral candidate at Yale University, and her colleagues presented nonexperts with flawed explanations for psychological phenomena. They were adept at spotting the errors—until, that is, these explanations were accompanied by "Brain scans indicate … " With those three words, Weisberg's participants suddenly found the flawed explanations compelling. Yet in truth, at least at this stage of the technology, we rarely learn as much by visualizing addicts' brains than by asking them what they are experiencing and what they desire.

Telling the public that addiction is a "chronic and relapsing brain disease" suggests that an addict's disembodied brain holds the secrets to understanding and helping him. It implies that medication is necessary and that interventions must be applied directly at the level of the brain. But that's not how people recover. For actress Jamie Lee Curtis, for example, quitting painkillers was a spiritual matter. When she appeared on Larry King Live recently, the guest host asked her, "What made you get clean?" She responded, "Well, you know what, that turning point was a—was really a moment between me and God. I never went to treatment. I walked into the door of a 12-step program and I have not walked out since."

Finally, dare we ask: Why is stigma bad? It is surely unfortunate if it keeps people from getting help (although we believe the real issue is not embarrassment but fear of a breach of confidentiality). The push to destigmatize overlooks the healthy role that shame can play, by motivating many otherwise reluctant people to seek treatment in the first place and jolting others into quitting before they spiral down too far.

You would think Congress has better things to do than legislate name changes. And in the long run, the well-meaning effort to overmedicalize addiction could have baleful consequences. Addiction is not as hopeless or uncontrollable as the brain disease metaphor suggests. Yes, like other bad habits, it is in our brains—but like other bad habits, it can be broken.

VIEW AS SINGLE PAGE
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Sally Satel is a staff psychiatrist at Oasis Clinic in Washington, D.C., and a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute. Scott Lilienfeld is a professor of psychology at Emory University.
Photograph of Joe Biden by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images. Photograph of whisky on the Slate home page by Paul Katz/Photodisc.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Topic A: Obama's Speech
| Pundits and diplomats respond.
Robinson: Sunshine in BerlinToles: The World ?'s ObamaTelnaes: Meanwhile, McCain