text: i perceive addiction as  disease, what other opinions are out there?   one of the difficulties of looking at addictions within a "disease" model, is that from a rehabilitative point of view, it effectively absolves the person from any personal responsibility, as they have a "disease". obviously, this is problematic in treatment, as it relies essentially on the person being motivated to change and taking some ownership of the problem, which is not the way the medical or disease model works. in medicine, things are done to people, i.e. they are treated, but when rehabilitating people with dependency issues, the opposite needs to happen, they need to take personal responsibility, otherwise they will go back to using. this is all part of an overall trend over the last 30 years, where medicine (and in particular, psychiatry) has attempted to classify what was previously seen as deviant behaviour and turn it into a "disease". it can be argued that this has led to modern psychiatry being more about social policing then actual treatment of mental health problems in the classic sense (such as schizophrenia, depression, etc.). however, as a final point, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that some people do have a physiological vulnerability to becoming addicted to some substances. hope this helps!