The Medical Model Road

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 2 explores the problems caused by many mental health practitioners who consider psychoactive substance abuse a phenomenon caused by a disease residing within their patients’ brains. Consequently, their patients are told that they have a lifelong chronic illness. People experiencing this putative disease of addiction are institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals, detoxed in hospital or rehab settings, referred to private expensive rehabs, attend 12-step programs, and, unfortunately, experience failures in recovery and return to the same treatment cycle. This chapter examines the problem caused by treatments using the disease model that measures successful treatment by the number of days a person remains abstinent from abusing a psychoactive substance. This leads to so-called slips that indicate that their disease is active and must return to treatment.