Sociological and Therapeutic Bias on Understanding Brain Disease

Sociological and Therapeutic Implications of the Brain Disease

Inspiration for professionals who authored the account on chronic brain illnesses came from findings on drugs' impacts on the human brain. The assurance that strong anti-addiction medicines can be found appeared great. The budding scientific branch, addiction biology, implies that addiction --a condition which starts off with the clear, intentional decision to have a go at drugs, spiraling quickly down to an irrepressible, involuntary state --would now be considered seriously, and forever, as an ailment. Using this knowledge, authors hoped to sensitize lawmakers as well as the society to drug-addicts' needs, including improved coverage of private insurance and public treatment access. The agenda also included moderating of puritanical outlooks and smoothing of penal law enforcement. The neuro-centric approach supports unjustified optimism with regard to pharmaceutical treatments, overrating the requirement of professional aid. Conditions characteristically remitted in young adulthood are branded as "chronic." The account of brain disease doesn't pay any much attention to the fact that drugs and alcohol have some purpose in the lives of those addicted to them; also, it is possible to override substance-induced neurobiological changes. The model of brain disease does involve some amount of truth -- alcoholism and drug addiction have a genetic impact, as does long-duration substance misuse; often, it harms brain structures responsible for self-governance mediation (Satel, & Lilienfeld, 2013). This paper will critically analyze the therapeutic and sociological implications of substance abuse's "brain disease" theory, and how the above theory biases or limits a grasp of complex human behaviors like chronic alcohol or drug consumption.

Conception of Deviant Drinking and Drug Use

Deviant drinking refers to a condition in which an individual exhibits behaviors not consistent with behavioral, societal, or cultural norms. Such individuals partake in antisocial acts, misuse alcohol and drugs, break societal norms, perpetrate violence, and break criminal laws. Deviance, however, doesn't necessarily imply that an individual is antisocial, disengaged, criminal, or violent. It can also imply that their deviation from societal norms occurs in a specific social setting or community. Normally, deviant acts are associated with delinquent or antisocial activities, as they are usually disruptive and bothersome. Participation in alcohol/drug abuse, crime, aggression, and violence denote some commonly occurring deviant behaviors. Alcohol and drug misuse is included in the above listing as people engaging in it typically participate in, or seek out, socially non-conformist activities. They are identified as easygoing, individualistic, unruly, and pleasure-seeking. Failure of most drug users to proceed to the dependency/abuse phase indicates that there is a lot more to addiction than landing of drug molecules in the brain receptor sites. Advocates of the brain disease theory usually assert that chronic consumption of drugs reduces brain metabolism, giving rise to "brain deficits" within the addict's prefrontal cortex, helping sustain addiction. To explain persistent drunkenness, different forms have been assumed by the addiction-as-a-disease model. A majority of individuals are of the view that the vice, driving drunkenness, dwell in individual drunkards' moral character. Temperance advocates, during the nineteenth century, propagated the idea that the bottle contained the evil; anybody who touches their lips to alcohol will likely start abusing it and everybody is susceptible to acquiring this disease. The above view eventually gave rise to the 1919 countrywide prohibition of alcohol. Shortly after its repealing in the year 1933, the fellowship, Alcoholics Anonymous, together with a growing association of scientific and medical partners, formulated a novel theory on the link of alcohol with addiction. According to this theory, most individuals could drink moderately; however, some people were highly vulnerable to chronic drinking, and therefore, prone to uncontrollable dependency (Deviance and Addiction, n.d).

Drug consumption is labeled as a subdivision of non-normative, deviant, and unlawful behavior, as psychoactive substance use elicits violation of societal norms and laws; therefore, drug use results in deviance and crime. Containment of drug consumption is done through links with or conformity to conventional beliefs, individuals, behaviors, and social institutions. Social control theoreticians consider it to be an attachment of individuals to conventionality, accounting for abstinence from substances; weak or absent attachments account for drug consumption. It is evident that crimes, including use of illegal drugs, vastly vary through participation in conventional social institutions, and interaction with other conventional societal aspects (Goode, 2011).

The Medical Model

This model promises an indisputable biological foundation for addiction. May (2001: 385) writes that that the phenomenon of addiction in the medical context is grounded on personal agency's subordination (and, therefore, the likelihood of individual regulation) to a hypothesized pathological structure. Two major explanatory frameworks in this approach postulate biological mechanisms: neuro-adaptation model and genetic model. The former is most commonly used to explain addictive behavior. It has been stressed by Vrecko (2010) that though addiction, neuroscience rose, owing to favorable financial and political conditions; one should not forget that the position has been highly productive, contributing to a near-total acceptance of the idea that addiction represents a brain disease. However, this approach has also been criticized by some. Nevertheless, the medical concept remains popular, as the NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), financier of approximately 85% of global addiction research, supports this approach (Vrecko, 2010). This position is most willingly applied in the substance use context; reconciling it with the behavioral addictions notion proves tougher.

Espousers of addiction medicalization usually proudly state that they have transformed how addiction is perceived; instead of a punishable crime, it is now regarded as an ailment requiring therapy. Though some progress towards this view has been made, the claim of addiction being a disease continues to be closely allied with penal prohibition laws, which have brought about mass imprisonment of powerless people. Drug courts witness a summoning of the disease perspective on a daily basis for justifying imprisonment, though as an incentive to therapy for addicts' own good. Drug policies, as has been noted, affect drug users' psychological sets as well as social use settings, thereby having consequences reverting to patterns of behavior that they assert to be a mere rational response. Research into critical addiction focuses on these linkages, as drug policies, quite often, have had intense negative impacts on social justice and human rights. Such studies endeavor to come up with more humane drug policies, which will be able to integrate, and not ostracize, problematic drug users, and prompt better reduction of drug-related damage. As the disease model expands to cover greater numbers of behaviors, critically considering response to and framing of addictions is more vital than ever. One will be "chasing a phantom" if one is fixated on understanding overeating, gambling, compulsive sex, "pathological" use of the Internet, or innumerable other behaviors, which may, in the near future, be termed as "addictive behaviors," only in brain-chemistry terms (Reinarman, & Granfield 2014).