Seeing Addiction as a Learning Disorder Changes Everything 

While advocates have long tried to convince the public that addiction is a disease— a position ratified by most experts— this view has also always been controversial. For one, many drugs are criminalized, suggesting that it is a moral problem rather than an illness.

Secondly, addictive behavior is not completely involuntary, in contrast to conditions like Alzheimer’s that cannot be altered by changes in motivation.
I see addiction as a developmental learning disorder: a condition that definitely belongs in the realm of medicine and psychiatry, not the criminal legal system. Understanding the role of learning in addiction helps resolve some of the paradoxes that prompt resistance to the idea that addiction is a medical, not moral, issue.

(Editor’s note: The following op-ed was written by Maia Szalavitz as part of ourSpecial Series on Pathways to Addiction. Ms.Szalavitz is the author of Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction and Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction. She is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. (Cambridge Health Alliance und Harvard Medical School, USA, 17.03.2023)

https://basis.typepad.com/files/special-series-on-pathways-to-addiction-szalavitz-op-ed_03.17.23.pdf