The Disease of Addiction

What do heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancer and addiction have in common?

Each is a chronic, progressive, primary (no other root cause) disease, characterized by relapse. If left untreated or mistreated, it can and will result in death.

If you get pneumonia, treating it properly with antibiotics can cure it. Infectious diseases can be cured.

But not heart disease. Let’s say you go to the emergency room with classic heart attack symptoms…you receive immediate angioplasty to clear a blocked artery…you’re prescribed medication, exercise and nutrition regimens you follow religiously. Nine months later you’re back in the emergency room with similar symptoms…it’s a RELAPSE. Is there an ER in America that will turn that person away because they "had their chance?"

Yet, that’s how addicted individuals with their chronic, progressive, primary disease are often treated when they relapse.

Is it right to provide treatment to those who suffer from all but one of these chronic, progressive primary diseases and deny treatment to those who suffer from the disease of addiction? If left untreated or mistreated, it can and will result in death.