Disease of Addiction — one of the most difficult aspects of this whole “thing” — from substance abuse to addiction to secondhand drinking/drugging — is to understand and accept that addiction (whether it’s to drugs or alcohol) is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease.

Disease of Addiction Explained

Everything about our body — what we can see and what we cannot see — is made up of cells. Diseases change cells in our body — that’s what makes a disease a disease.  A disease might change cells in body organs (like the heart or liver or eyes) or in body organ systems (meaning several organs working together), like metabolism or cardiovascular. For example, the disease of breast cancer attacks cells in the breast and the disease of diabetes, attacks cells in the metabolism system. The disease of addiction changes cells in the brain, which is why addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease. Addiction also often changes cells in several other body organs, as well, such as the liver, heart and kidney.

But it is the brain changes that are most important to understand because it is the brain changes that cause a person to behave differently (what I call drinking/drugging behaviors). It is the brain changes that cause a person to pick fights, to minimize how bad it is, to flip the discussion to something or someone else as the cause of what they did while drinking, to think they are ‘okay’ to drive, to keep on drinking in the wake of promises too many to count to stop or cut down, to….

Addiction Explanation Resources

So, to help with this understanding that addiction is a brain disease and why — what makes it different than substance abuse, why do some ‘get’ it and others don’t, what are family members and friends supposed to do to help (or can they), I want to share an important, comprehensive resource: The Addiction Project.  This website is FULL of research (presented in a very user-friendly manner) produced by HBO in partnership with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Another excellent resource is provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse: Drugs, Brains and Behavior: The Science of Addiction.

By learning about and understanding addiction as a chronic, often relapsing brain disease, which by it’s very nature, changes the way a person’s brain works, and thus their behaviors, we can go a long way towards ending the stigma and shame that blocks real progress in preventing and treating this disease.

Please pass this along and whenever, wherever possible,  TALK ABOUT IT.

©2011 Lisa Frederiksen

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Lisa Frederiksen

Author | Speaker | Consultant | Founder at BreakingTheCycles.com

Lisa Frederiksen is the author of hundreds of articles and 12 books, including her latest, "10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You'd Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much,” and "Loved One In Treatment? Now What!” She is a national keynote speaker with over 30 years speaking experience, consultant and founder of BreakingTheCycles.com. Lisa has spent the last 19+ years studying and simplifying breakthrough research on the brain, substance use and other mental health disorders, secondhand drinking, toxic stress, trauma/ACEs and related topics.

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