If you ever attend a meeting of the Narcotics Anonymous, you will hear them explain why drug addiction is a disease and drug abuse is only a symptom of it. They consider drug addiction to be the mental condition that prevails in the person. It is the drug addiction that actually needs to be addressed and treated.

When the person is physically using the drugs, they are only succumbing to one of the symptoms of this disease known as drug addiction. It is the urge caused by the addiction that prompts the person to look for release by using the drug. This is the basic reason why drug addiction is considered to be the overriding disease of which the drug abuse is only a physical manifestation.

The implication of this lies in most of the drug addiction treatment programs used today. These programs do not rely on physically stopping the person from using the drug. However, they do make conscious efforts to treat the psychological presence of drug addiction within the person. The argument is thus – If the person is treated of the mental craving that the drug addiction disease causes, then the person will never want to physically use the drug.

Just as you cannot cure yellow skin and eyes without treating the jaundice of the person, drug abuse also cannot be stopped without first treating the addiction itself. This view of drug addiction treatment goes contrary to popular methods like rehab and detox programs, but even these methods are adopting this new approach towards drug addiction treatment through their counseling programs.

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