Topic
Addiction & agency research, explained
6 open-access addiction & agency studies, each with a flashcard deck and a quiz.
- Can we hold addicts responsible without blame?
Pickard argues that clinic-style responsibility without blame treats people as capable of change without the stigma of condemnation.
- Is addiction a brain disease or development?
Lewis treats addiction as a self-perpetuating learning loop in a plastic brain, not a deviation from a neuronormative healthy brain.
- Does rejecting disease remoralize addiction?
Moralization and stigma persist despite the disease model; alternative models (Flanagan, Lewis, Levy) can treat responsibility without sliding back into blame.
- Must addiction be disease or vice?
Heather argues the BDMA’s political claim — that only a brain-disease story can fight stigma — is false, and that addiction is neither brain disease nor moral failing.
- Is brain-disease addiction the exception?
Fenton and Wiers argue that Korsakoff-level brain disease is a black swan; most addiction sits on a gradual continuum of impaired control that can recover.
- Is there a disease-like stage in addiction?
Snoek argues Lewis is right that BDMA’s ‘chronic brain disease’ slogan does not follow from the mechanisms, and she models a temporary duress-like stage that recovery can pass through.