[crunchyfrog]

I think drug addiction is really misunderstood and this leads to bad policy. The two popular narratives that drug addiction is a moral failing or a disease are both wrong. In some ways it is more simple than that: drug addiction is a coping mechanism.

Most people who get addicted to drugs are using them to escape pain. This is occasionally physical but usually mental. It is memories of traumatic experiences or abuse, loss, stress, etc.

That is why incarceration is so counterproductive, you are just giving the addict more pain they need to escape. Also treating drug addiction itself without understanding and addressing the underlying reason for it will just lead to constant relapsing.

I recommend the book Chasing the Scream for people who want a better understanding of drug addiction.

[daenz]

>drug addiction is a coping mechanism.

That's reductionist. The bigger picture is: why do some people end up with drug addiction as their coping mechanism, but others don't. Why aren't all abuse victims drug addicts? What separates the ones who fall down that hole and the ones who don't? Opportunity? If not opportunity, then what is that X factor? That's why you get to the larger questions of disease, responsibility, and moral failing.

[yosito]

The answer to your question is that drugs are one of many possible coping mechanisms. One abuse victim copes with drugs, while another copes with Stockholm syndrome, and yet another with therapy. What separates the ones who fall down the hole from the ones who don't is a combination of opportunity, biology (people have different reactions to the same drugs), and choice. It's understandable that this leads people to questions of disease and moral failing. Questions of behavior and coping mechanisms require much more nuance.

[Phenomenit]

There's always a coping mechanism, it's just a matter of where in society you and what norms and taboos you subscribe to. If drug use has been a part of your life or people around you it's easier to reach for. This is why demonizing drugs and drug users kind of work. But other coping mechanisms are just as bad and sometimes do way more harm to the individual before being surfaced. Workaholism is very detrimental and can have a long lasting effect on ones life(speaking from personal experience).

[crunchyfrog]

I'd say opportunity, physiology and personality.

Telling someone who is already in more pain than they can handle that they are sick, weak or immoral is not a good idea. After all, they might decide it is true.

[phil248]

Using drugs to treat a physical addiction is first and foremost a "coping mechanism" for treating the physical addiction.

When a serious alcoholic is puking themselves nearly to death as they try and get sober, they aren't trying to escape some childhood trauma or "stress". They are trying to escape a physical addiction that has already dramatically altered their mind and body and may possibly kill them.

You may be confusing the cause of drug use with the consequences of repeatedly using addictive drugs. Eventually, the drug addiction replaces all other problems. It's not a representation of other problems.

[crunchyfrog]

If withdrawal symptoms were really the main reason addicts continued to use drugs then relapses would be rare. I recommend reading about the Rat Park experiments:

> In another experiment, he forced rats in ordinary lab cages to consume the morphine-laced solution for 57 days without other liquid available to drink. When they moved into Rat Park, they were allowed to choose between the morphine solution and plain water. They drank the plain water. He writes that they did show some signs of dependence. There were "some minor withdrawal signs, twitching, what have you, but there were none of the mythic seizures and sweats you so often hear about ..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Also, before you argue that humans are different than rats, the same thing was observed with soldiers in Vietnam. Many were addicted while they served but when they returned to the US, the large majority quit and very few relapsed.

[phil248]

I don't know what to tell you man. Quitting alcohol cold turkey can kill a person. Go get to know some people struggling with addiction to maybe broaden your perspective beyond some study you read? And keep in mind that different people suffer from addictions in many different ways. For substances like alcohol and cocaine, there are well known genetic differences that predispose people to those addictions.

[asveikau]

A lot of mental illnesses are also coping mechanisms or related to them. An illness doesn't need to not be a coping mechanism for it to be an illness.