Addiction is (not) a disease. The biomedical model of addiction and its critics

Abstract

This brief review presents, in very general terms, the brain disease model of addiction, which defines drug addiction and other addictive behaviours as chronic and relapsing brain diseases, and some of its most prominent critics, authors who argue that this way of looking at these phenomena is limited and reductive because it ignores, or at least devalues, the social factors, contexts and structural causes of addiction. A number of experts and academics critical of the biomedical perspective have sought to demonstrate that addictions are essentially learned and adaptive responses to social and emotional adversity, advocating a more multifactorial and holistic approach that recognises the meaning and agency of people with addictive behaviours.