Terminology


How some people are able to use drugs or alcohol with relative safety whilst others are devastated by them is a major question that intrigues researchers and academics. Very crudely speaking there are two schools of thought, those who propose some sort of addiction or disease model and others who look at social learning as ways of explaining the roots of problems. Both of these approaches are defined and redefined by scholars so putting them in strong terms and opposed to each other is only for illustration rather than to provide a comprehensive description.

The Addict word

Addict is the most common word used to describe someone with a drug or alcohol problem. The meaning is clear in the popular mind. It describes a person unable to control themselves or their behaviour and who is driven solely by the compulsive need to take drugs. This compulsion makes them untrustworthy, manipulative and a danger to themselves and to the people around them.

Alcoholic

Similarly, ‘alcoholic’ normally means the park bench drinker sitting alone or with a couple of others amidst the cans of extra strong lager. The story of the person is one of fecklessness, lack of self control and an inevitable decline into an early grave – unless the person joins a circle of people introducing themselves to the group as ‘My name is ….. and I am an alcoholic.’
Issues are further complicated by the use of ‘addiction’ to describe any strong desire to go shopping, to the cinema or spend an hour on the internet – it may mean simply that the person really, really likes doing something.

A different type of human

Common to many ideas about addiction is the belief that there is something fundamentally different about the addicted person – often described as the disease of chemical dependency. This is sometimes seen to be something genetic or a personality disorder. A kind of person affected like this is often described as having an ‘addictive personality’. The impact of this is that it will never be safe for them to use again.
This idea, although very common in the press and in the US in particular is highly contested: one recent study concluded that “There is no alcoholic personality nor are there personality measures which are specific to vulnerability to later alcohol dependence. Attempting to link alcoholism with theoretical, poorly validated models of personality is premature.”
Behind the popular rhetoric around addiction there is a great deal of fear – and where there is fear there is finger-pointing. Many arguments about drug use turn to the responsibility of others:-
‘Personally, I blame the
• Parents
• Schools
• Government ….
• They should be doing more to…..’
This stereotypical image of an addict is so engrained in the mind that many people who may have major issues with drink or drugs do see themselves as being as’ bad as that’ and so do not seek out assistance.