Abstract

The ubiquity of the disease concept of addiction obscures the fact 
that it did not emerge from the accretion of scientific discoveries. 
Addiction-as-disease has been continuously redefined, mostly in the 
direction of conceptual elasticity, such that it now yields an 
embarrassment of riches: a growing range of allegedly addictive 
phenomena which do not involve drugs. This article begins with 
questions that have been raised about whether ''addiction'' is a 
discrete disease entity with a distinct etiology. It then summarizes 
the historical and cultural conditions under which 
addiction-as-disease was constructed, the specific actors and 
institutions who promulgated it, and the discursive procedures 
through which it is reproduced and internalized by those said to be 
afflicted. Understanding how the dominance of additiction discourse 
was accomplished in these ways does not imply that the lived 
experience of what is called addiction is therefore any less acute or 
compelling. But it does invite attention to the contradictory uses of 
disease discourse: a humane warrant for necessary health services and 
legitimation of repressive drug policies.

CRAIG REINARMAN
Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
(Received November 2004; accepted 9 February 2005)

<http://sociology.ucsc.edu/directory/reinarman/addiction.pdf>http://sociology.ucsc.edu/directory/reinarman/addiction.pdf 


( ... and mental illness? Sylvia)


"People Who experience mood swings, fear, voices and visions"