its not just a bad habit CONTRO VERSY persists
Despite buy-in from most corners of the medical community, the disease model is occasionally still challenged. Recently, researchers at the University of Queensland wrote that “there is considerable scienti c value in neurobiological and genetic research on addiction, but this research does not justify the simpli ed (brain disease model of addiction) that dominates discourse about addiction in the USA and increasingly elsewhere.” The Queensland researchers were responding to an article in the journal Nature inferring that the disease model of addiction was the consensus in the medical community. A 2015 article in The Lancet Psychiatry titled “Brain disease model of addiction: why is it so controversial?” refuted the Queensland researchers’ opinion in a commentary. “Preclinical and clinical studies have consistently delineated speci c molecular and functional neuroplastic changes at the synaptic and circuitry level that are triggered by repeated drug exposure. These ndings, along with ongoing research, are helping us understand the neurobiological processes associated with the loss of control, compulsive drug taking, in exible behaviour, and negative emotional states associated with addiction.”
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