How should we view drug addiction? Is it a disease or a disorder? Is it evidence of deviance or despair? Is it something people fall into unawares or the fruit of many bad choices over time? And do these questions even matter? I would argue that they do. How we think about drug addiction impacts both our understanding of root causes and proper responses to this affliction that has engulfed a growing portion of our population.
How to think and speak about people enslaved to intoxicating substances has a protracted history. It appears that pastors and not medical men were the first to attach the label ‘disease’ to those driven by a craving for alcohol. Extant sermons from clergy in the 1600’s advanced the view that something overtook individuals such that drinking is out of their control. Benjamin Rush, the noted Revolutionary War physician and follower of Christ, did more than anyone to advance compassionate care for those afflicted with a variety of mental disorders. Rush promoted the notion that alcoholism was a ‘disease of the will’—indicating that something was amiss in such individuals leading them to compulsive and destructive use of alcohol. He even suggested that the propensity to
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