The Opioid Addict's Mindset as a Disease
The opioid addict's mindset has long been seen as irrational; they have little control over their drug-addicted habits and can only find hope through organized support programs. Substance use is a disorder, not a decision made by the abusers, contrary to popular belief. According to emerging medicine, this is a brain disease. It has the same genetic transmutability as other chronic diseases in the world today. And the brain is the most organs that is affected by this disorder, within brain system there is inhibition, motivation, cognition, all the cells that generate the aberrant, distasteful behaviors that are mostly connected with addiction. Addiction is a disease. Take for instance; craving that most of the addicts of alcohol feel for alcohol tends to be as strong as compared to the need for water or food. It has been classified by the major international organization of health as disease including World Health Organization (WHO).This paper will examine and analyze drug addiction as a disease based on the addict's inability to abstain, behavioral control impairment, reduced the ability to recognize effects, emotional response impairment and based on the various experiences from different sources.
The Effects of Addiction as a Disease
According to Anne Sexton, addiction creates and promotes death alongside sleep, making someone have awkward feeling and lacking the emotion of self-worth and appreciation. The addicts believe the situation is right for them as they feel they are more in a relaxed and comfortable condition at first. The aftermath results and conditions make the character in the story to feel suicidal. Anne Sexton(133) presents this story of a young female addict, the character in the story want to die by practicing it with little capability of stopping the vice, she has no choice but she is locked in a condition that she cannot have any more control over but to stick in and wait for death. She develops depression; this is depicted when the writer says she likes them more than she likes herself. It is compared to a kind of war where the subject plants a bomb inside (Salvio 144). This is a clear illustration of what addiction leads to, the feeling unworthiness, depression, death and abnormal love for sleep and the suicidal feeling. Clearly, these are characteristics of a disease, no one who is rational in his right mind with choose to harm himself; humankind always seeks the best and good for himself. The condition becomes like a cult; it offers the addicts with a strong feeling and desire for substance abuse as opposed to their consent choice.
The Emotional Toll of Addiction
In the book Heroin/e by Cheryl Strayed, the writer presents the story of her mother before she succumbed to death due to the disease of drug addiction. The condition not only depresses and stresses the addicts but also those they are close to, relatives, siblings, and dependents. The writer has a bad feeling to the mention of the word heroin. Drugs mean there is a loss of hope in someone. Someone dies fast but not that sudden. A person disease is a slow-burning flame of fire that eventually disappears into smoke and finally into the air (Strayed 03). There is usually loss of hope in someone abusing the drug like what happened to her mother making her continue abusing the substances more with one reason of easing and taking away reality and pain that comes with the condition she had been captured in unknowingly. When a person uses heroin, there is usually a brain response through the activation of the neurons that typically would remain in a dormant state. "She said it would take months for them to calm down" (Strayed 04). Some pains come with this making the addict consistently take the drugs so that she/he can drive out the unusual pain and remain in the "high" state.
The Journey of Addiction
In the poem "The Suicide Kid," the writer narrates how horrifying the journey of addiction is. He likens it to suicide where he is regularly going to the bars to find his death. Many drunkards around the world believe they head to the bars to get the drug, but they go there to kill themselves, drinking addiction is suicidal. They believe it's a choice as everything in their enjoyment seems good to the extent of the bar patrons even loving you and cracking some jokes and stories with you, it is always seen as a choice of enjoyment and luxury until someone realizes later it was a disease. Enticements are usually there on this journey to the death; free drinks are readily given, friends help you to die a peaceful death. The author presents that death does not always come running in the instances when one calls it, not even if one calls it from the best bars or the worst ones on the earth. Such impertinence makes the known gods always delay and hesitate (Bukowski). From the narration of the writer, it's definite addiction is a disease; addicts undergo silent and delayed death, they kill themselves by going to bars and offering to each other substance killers out of their control but due to the disease that captures their brain structure.
The Neuroscience of Addiction
Advancement in the field of neurobiology has started to clarify the reasons underlying the reflective disruptions in the capability of decision-making and emotional poise displayed by people with drug addiction. The advances also provide insights into the manner in which essential biologic processes, in case, are disrupted, adjust voluntary behavior.
The Role of Research and Treatment for Addiction
There has been an assessment of BDMA evidence in animals, that is, neuroimaging studies of individuals with addiction in addition to recent research on the genetics role in dependency. This has helped in coming up with a more formidable treatment for addiction.
Conclusion
In conclusion, drug addiction is never a choice but a disease that with the recent advancement in research can be treated and corrected. It's time for people to stop viewing addiction as neither a crime nor a choice and come in to help those dependent on drugs. Addicts suffer things that they have less control over as their brain is mostly interfered with, they are usually left with the hope of constant and continual uptake of the drugs to ease the pain, but they eventually kill themselves through these acts.
Work Cited
Bukowski, Charles. “The Suicide Kid.” The suicide kid. N.P., 2017. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.
Hall Wayne, Adrian Carter, and Cynthia Forlini. “The brain disease model of addiction: is it supported by the evidence and has it delivered on its promises?” The Lancet Psychiatry 2.1 (2015): 105-110.
Salvio, Paula M. Anne Sexton: The Addict. SUNY Press, 2012.
Strayed, Cheryl.-Cheryl Strayed.Cherylstrayed.com.N.P. 2017. Web.12 Feb. 2017
Volkow, Nora D., George F. Koob, and A. Thomas McLellan. “Neurobiology advances from the brain disease model of addiction.” New England Journal of Medicine 374.4 (2016): 363-371.
