I think you're broadly labeling "us addicts" here, which is sort of the point of the article. I outgrew my addiction (but I'm not suggesting that anyone who ne

I think you're broadly labeling "us addicts" here, which is sort of the point of the article. I outgrew my addiction (but I'm not suggesting that anyone who needs help just "wait it out!" - see below). The article is essentially asserting that of the people who clinically qualify as addicts earlier in their lives, about half of those people don't by the time they are in their 30's, and that the pursuit of treatment doesn't necessarily correlate to that outcome. That isn't to say that there are people who absolutely need to treat addiction as a disease, and that viewing the next drink as an existential threat isn't an important part to their recovery. When I was a teenager and in my 20's, my drinking and drug use was out of control, and I did enter treatment including 12 step programs. Those weren't particularly effective at keeping me sober in part because of the mantra that "hey, you have a disease, and you don't have control". That's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy to a younger brain. What ultimately happened to me was that the life I wanted wasn't compatible with drug and alcohol abuse, and I moved on in my mid-20's. I do occasionally drink now (in my 40's), but there's no fathomable way that I could see myself going back to what I did when I was young, and no clinician would diagnose me as an addict or alcoholic today. So yes, the article is dangerous if you are part of the subset to which it doesn't apply. The question is whether we should be treating all addicts in the same way. One answer might be "use the disease model on all addicts because it may apply". Another might be to try to treat this as a leaning disorder. Right now, we don't know the answer, so I agree with much of your practical advice: if you need help, it's out there, in the form of free communities of 12 step programs, as well as medical treatment programs.