Addiction seen as a moral failing!?

I came across this article from a few months ago which shows we as a collective have not come very far in understanding addiction and that society continues to stigmatize those suffering from addiction.

It makes depressing reading considering the advances in neuroscientific evidence which demonstrates that addiction is clearly a psychiatric disorder, involve chronic neuroplasticity of the brain which has a permanent influence on behaviour. The brain of the addict is changed irrevocably during the addiction cycle, hence once an alcoholic/addicts always an alcoholic/addict.

It has nothing to do with weak will – it is about a impaired and compromised self will.

If any thing we have too much will power sometimes not lacking in it.

The University study below states that many of the public still see addiction as a vice and not a medical condition. Unfortunately there are also many academics who feel the same way.

Read for yourselves (1)

“People with drug addiction are much more likely to face stigma than those with mental illness because they’re seen as having a “moral failing,” according to a new survey.

The poll of more than 700 people across the United States also found that the public is less likely to approve of insurance, housing and employment policies meant to help people with drug addiction.

“While drug addiction and mental illness are both chronic, treatable health conditions, the American public is more likely to think of addiction as a moral failing than a medical condition,” study leader Colleen Barry, an associate professor in the department of health policy and management, said in a Hopkins news release.

“In recent years, it has become more socially acceptable to talk publicly about one’s struggles with mental illness. But with addiction, the feeling is that the addict is a bad or weak person, especially because much drug use is illegal,” she added.

The survey revealed that only 22 percent of people would be willing to work closely on a job with someone with a drug addiction, while 62 percent said they would do so with a person with a mental illness.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said employers should be able to refuse to employ people with a drug addiction, while 25 percent said the same about people with a mental illness. Forty-three percent of respondents said people with drug addiction should not be given the same health insurance benefits as the general public, while 21 percent felt the same about those with mental illness.

About 30 percent of respondents believed that recovery from either drug addiction or mental illness is impossible, according to the study in the October issue of the journal Psychiatric Services.

“The more shame associated with drug addiction, the less likely we as a community will be in a position to change attitudes and get people the help they need,” study co-author Beth McGinty, an assistant professor in the department of health policy and management at Hopkins, said in the news release.

“If you can educate the public that these are treatable conditions, we will see higher levels of support for policy changes that benefit people with mental illness and drug addiction,” she added.”

This is depressing because in doesn’t help addicts get help. I did not want to go to AA because I did not want to be stigmatised so this sort of ignorance does have a profound effect. I did not want to go to AA although I have been in alcoholic psychosis for months and was certifiable but AA, well….?

If they only knew how profound this illness is? I would not wish it on my worst enemy, if I had one. Although sometimes I feel that some could do with a temporary dose of it.

Anyway we trudge on…

References

from this link –  http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2014/10/03/drug-addiction-seen-as-moral-failing-survey-finds