My online screen novel project has been updated. In case you want something to read instead of dwelling about your life. Here is the link. You don’t have to download the app, but I would appreciate if you download it (it has a free version) and followed me. But you can also read or listen to it on a web browser. The link is https://mdabdoubl.medium.com
Many people hold the belief that substance abuse is a choice, not a medical condition. People with addictions face criticism and are often seen as reckless, irresponsible, and of less value as those who do not face this predicament. People believe this mainly because “when a health condition is thought to derive from bad behavior, a character flaw, or moral deficit, it produces a markedly different reaction than when is thought to derive from a genetic predisposition, neurological disorder, or a medical disease.” (Richter, Linda and Susan E. Foster, 2014, p. 62) The myth that addiction is a choice creates a misconception that “all addicts” are in control of their predicament; they chose their own fate and now is their problem. Are they failing us because of their “poor decisions”? Or are we failing them because we are perpetuating a myth without scientific exploration?
All of our existence is based on nature. Relating this to what goes through our body when we are addicted to a toxic substance as drugs or alcohol. According to scientific research “supports that some individuals may have a predisposition toward physiological dependence to certain substances, such as alcohol, opioids, cocaine and nicotine.” (Brym, Robert and John Lie, 2018, p. 108). In order to understand us we need to understand our nature. Our brain and bodies, under the influence of stupefactives, undergo a physical change that makes them a slave of that addiction, making our prefrontal cortex thinking it does not have a choice. There is a disorder of choice, we know is corrupting our minds and bodies but we are unable to make a better choice, or at least it seems so. Not all people have addictions to drugs and/or alcohol, so is still a choice? Or a failure of society as a whole?
“Social-cognitive theorists: suggest that people often try alcohol and tranquilizers such as Valium (generic name is diazepam) on the basis of recommendation of observation of others. Expectations about the effects of a substance predicts it use.” (Brym, Robert and John Lie, 2018 p.108) In other words, we are conditioned by those around us. In certain communities the use of drugs and alcohol is not stigmatized and certain behaviors are normalized even when we hold the information that is harmful for us. A clear example of this is, even though we are talking about nicotine in this case, is France. Lung cancer is the fourth leading cause of death according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) (http://www.healthdata.org/france). Some friends of mine that were in Paris said to me that walking through the city was like walking through a clouds of cigarettes smoke.
Another cause of addiction may very well be the self-fulfilling prophecy, “which holds that situations that we define as real become real in their consequences.” (Brym, Robert and John Lie, 2018 p. 57) This hits very close to home because I, as part of the First Nation community have endured the expectancy that we as a race tend to have problems with addictions, especially alcoholism. Talking to some of my native friends about if we all concluded that yes, there is a problem in our community with them, could it be that a generalized opinion in Canada that we tend to and so we do. Adding to this that I just wrote about is Bandura’s Theory of Social Learning in which proposes that what children see, children do. One of my native friends told me that not only does she knows many addicts in her reserve but had family members that were on the business of drugs.
As we can see there are many underlying factors that can impact a person’s vulnerability to addictions. First, there is that scientific research has proven that they alter our brain function and our ability to take reasonable and adequate choices. We also saw that normalizing the behavior and seeing it as just a bad habit can create addictions because we are all aware that these can be mortal. Finally I reflected on my peers lives and mine based on the self-fulfilling prophecy. Because of all these reasons I can firmly state that although there is free will in all of us, some of us, are more subject to be susceptible to fall into the dark deeps of addictions.
