Addiction & agency
Does rejecting disease remoralize addiction?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Moralization and stigma persist despite the disease model; alternative models (Flanagan, Lewis, Levy) can treat responsibility without sliding back into blame.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Several papers reject the slogan that only a chronic brain-disease story can fight stigma or explain compulsion.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Inspect source passages
Does rejecting disease remoralize addiction?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Debate frame?
whether addiction is a disease, i.e. a pathological compulsion the concerned cannot resist, or whether it is a matter of choice, i.e. a matter of willpower
NIDA-style BDMA?
a chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences. It is considered a brain disease
Key findings
Stigma persists despite the disease model’s prevalence. Further moralization would likely worsen law and public health. Reasons-responsiveness shows responsibility conditions are complex; one can reject disease without treating addiction as simple vice.
Methodology
The authors define moralization, ask whether the disease model really disentangles addiction from morals, and compare Flanagan’s twin normative failure, Lewis’s learning model, and Levy’s defect-of-agency model, focusing on reasons-responsiveness and moral responsibility.
Limitations
This is conceptual, not a new stigma survey. Medicalization is flagged as future work. It does not prove any model uniquely destigmatises.
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Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.