What Addiction is Not Addiction is not a weakness or a lack of willpower. It is not a moral deficiency, nor is it a character flaw. Addiction is a complicated and seductive disease. A part of it has to do with the alteration of brain chemistry, resulting in loss of control of behavior and a powerful craving for the addict's drug of choice, whether it be cocaine, alcohol, or another drug. The disease can be hereditary, and it can result from behavior learned by observing and imitating practices in the environment in which the addict lives.
Addiction can be cultural and sometimes ethnic in nature.
All of these factors, in fact, can come together at the same time to make the disease of addiction amazingly powerful. At the heart of the disease is compulsion , a force that makes a person continue to behave in a way that is bad for them and that they do not want to continue. Anderson-Oconee Behavioral Health Services believes that the first step to good treatment is to educate its clients about matters such as obsession and compulsion so that they may have a greater understanding of the forces they are trying to overcome. When we start to discuss different types of addiction, it is probably better to use the term Dependence. Professionals in the treatment of the disease make the distinction between Physiological Dependence and Psychological Dependence.