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We do expect people with medical conditions to take actions. Have cancer, do chemotherapy or get surgery. Overweight, change diet (or take thyroid medication, d

We do expect people with medical conditions to take actions. Have cancer, do chemotherapy or get surgery. Overweight, change diet (or take thyroid medication, depending). Celiac, don't eat gluten. Bacterial infection, take appropriate antibiotics. I might agree that addiction is a disease if we limit it to physical addiction. But colloquially "addiction" is used for what might be more precisely termed compulsive behavior, like spending hours on Facebook. This kind of "addiction" is more like self-medicating negative emotions, and negative emotions are generally telling us that we are "malnourished" in some area. So we might be FB-scrolling because we are bored (lack purpose, lack challenge, etc), or because we are lonely and want to feel connected. Until we figure out what FB-scrolling is doing for us and get that need met, we're going to feel "addicted" to FB.

glitchc 2y ago
This is what I'm trying to get at. It's not about removing responsibility but rather about seeking treatment options, like we do for any disease, instead of stigmatizing it and saying the patient can think themselves out of it. That last bit minimizes the impact and extent of the disease. You can't think your way out of cancer, a broken foot, or even a plain old bacterial infection. So why do we think we can do that for addiction? To your second para, we don't know the root cause until we diagnose it. We don't know if it's physical, psychological (trauma), a hormonal/nutritional deficiency or a combination thereof. Right now society wants people to treat themselves without an adequate diagnosis and that's problematic on multiple fronts.
- hatethissite42 2y ago
  The author is sharing a practical technique that helped him waste less time on internet crap. To me, that seems much closer to "seeking treatment options" than "stigmatizing it and saying the patient can think themselves out of it".

glitchc 2y ago

This is what I'm trying to get at. It's not about removing responsibility but rather about seeking treatment options, like we do for any disease, instead of stigmatizing it and saying the patient can think themselves out of it. That last bit minimizes the impact and extent of the disease. You can't think your way out of cancer, a broken foot, or even a plain old bacterial infection. So why do we think we can do that for addiction? To your second para, we don't know the root cause until we diagnose it. We don't know if it's physical, psychological (trauma), a hormonal/nutritional deficiency or a combination thereof. Right now society wants people to treat themselves without an adequate diagnosis and that's problematic on multiple fronts.

hatethissite42 2y ago
The author is sharing a practical technique that helped him waste less time on internet crap. To me, that seems much closer to "seeking treatment options" than "stigmatizing it and saying the patient can think themselves out of it".