TOWARDS A SITUATED MODEL OF ADDICTION

Abstract

In this paper, I evaluate the naturalistic (brain disorder model) and constructivist (moral model) views on addiction. First, I describe the naturalistic position that considers mental illness, including addiction, as “natural kinds”. But I find several problems with this model: a) Why does not everyone have drug dependency? and b) if there is a biomedical cause for addiction, why is the addict morally blamed and stigmatized? Second, I describe the constructivist view that presupposes a number of attitudes toward addiction –social values that determine our ideas and beliefs about addiction, for example. But, again, I find
several problems with this model: a) if there is no objective demarcation criterion of addiction, is it possible to deliberately marginalize and medicalize minority groups with psychiatry as an instrument or excuse for exploitation? and b) if constructivism is taken too seriously, is it not possible to over-diagnose and “pathologize” what would otherwise be a common behavior? Comparing both models, the naturalistic on the one hand, and the constructivist on the other, I conclude that a third way is necessary to overcome the aporias of each one of these epistemological models to describe addiction as a mental illness.