2023-04-22 11:00:00
Addiction is often framed as the result of a bad lifestyle, says Kor Spoelstra. He emphasizes that many of the risk factors are the result of the environment rather than personal choices.
Addiction is often considered a lifestyle choice because addiction is not communicable, contagious, or autoimmune. This view is also based on the idea that people can control their thinking, living environment and the way their brains respond to different stimuli. It is said that addiction is a self-acquired condition, because the person has made the decision to use the substance.
Someone with a serious cocaine addiction has at some point, under certain circumstances, made the decision to snort a first line, but not with the intention of becoming addicted. In addition, taking a first cigarette or beer, whether under peer pressure or not, often occurs at an age when adolescents are not yet able to make informed choices and understand the consequences of their behavior because their brains are not yet fully developed. developed. More than 90 percent of addicts start taking the substance they become addicted to before they turn 18.
Consideration ability
Is it a lifestyle choice of a girl with a GHB addiction, who against her will has sex with old men to fund her addiction? Or for an addicted son who sells his mother’s belongings with a bad conscience? A person with an atomized and addicted brain eventually loses control of his or her use. The ability to weigh in this state cannot be compared to the ability to weigh in a non-addicted person.
It is therefore also incorrect to view addiction as merely a lifestyle choice. A more nuanced approach to addiction is that dealing with underlying trauma, dysfunctional relationships, distressing emotions, and/or the rat race of life is often over the top. Sometimes people say that without their addiction they probably wouldn’t live anymore: “Addiction can be the plank that keeps the castaway afloat.”
This does not alter the fact that promoting a healthy lifestyle and preventing addiction are inextricably linked. Certain lifestyles increase or decrease the risk of addiction. Recovery from addiction also means revising your lifestyle. Trying to stay abstinent while continuing an old lifestyle will often be unsuccessful. In fact, adopting a healthy lifestyle may be one of the best measures to prevent addiction.
Addiction a moral issue?
Addiction is often still wrongly seen as a moral issue. This fits into the deep-rooted English tradition of ameliorism, which assumes that the solution of a social problem begins with reforming the individual: blaming the victim. However, choice cannot be the determining factor in the diagnosis of a disease. Various diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, are related to personal decisions such as diet and exercise.
‘Illness’ is what happens to the body as a result of substance use. Take, for example, someone who has been diagnosed with skin cancer from too much sun exposure. That person could have stayed out of the sun more, but the disease was not his choice. The biggest misunderstanding why addiction is often viewed as a lifestyle choice is that it is confused with regular and recreational use of drugs.
Simply labeling addiction as an unhealthy lifestyle choice is inaccurate and can be unintentionally harmful, as effective treatments for addiction exist. Failure to deploy or optimize these treatments can lead to unnecessary deaths. Moreover, to what extent are we really free to make unhealthy choices?
Individual often last link
Although responsibility for our health lies partly with the individual, there are many factors that influence this choice, of which the individual is often only the last link. The chance of developing an addiction is determined by factors such as genetics, neurobiology, psychological disorders, gender and/or environment. Yet addiction is often seen as solely one’s own responsibility.
But is that fair to people who cannot afford a healthy lifestyle? A healthy lifestyle is often not simple, cheap and accessible to everyone. Not everyone is able to live a healthy life because of a lack of money, for example. A healthy lifestyle is only a choice for those who can afford it.
Addiction is often framed as the result of a poor lifestyle, but many of the risk factors are the result of the environment rather than personal choices. In particular, the fight against addiction requires making choices for proven ‘collective lifestyle interventions’, such as abolishing VAT on fruit and vegetables, increasing excise duties on alcohol and cigarettes and restricting points of sale and smoking areas, introducing a sugar tax and promoting healthy schools.
Above all, we must ensure social security, equality of opportunity and invest in the social quality of our country. These choices are urgently needed, not out of patronizing, but to give every Dutch person the chance to lead a healthy lifestyle.
Kor Spoelstra is a psychiatrist at Verslavingszorg Noord Nederland and associate professor of Addiction and Lifestyle at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences.
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