Lifestyle modification? As in removing yourself from any temptations? How does that compare to cancer? Are you a recovering addict justice, or have you survived cancer?
If you take a drug, such as heroin or cocaine you've made a choice to most possibly be an addict. For whatever reason. Whenever I eat bad foods I make a decision. I don't want to have a heart attack but I have made a decision. If you are a recovering addict I hope you do not relapse but if you do it is your fault. The medical complications from drug addiction are real. Your will is still the deciding factor in your fate and you still brought this upon yourself. We are all adults here. Smoking, drugs, food. We are responsible for our actions. Hoffman screwed the pooch on this one. He was an addict on his early 20s, died in his 40s. He most certainly didn't want to leave his kids but he screwed up.
It may be a medical condition, but like diabetes it can be controlled. Stop comparing it to cancer.
The #1 recommended cure for addiction is Lifestyle modification, and not just removing yourself from temptation, but a total lifestyle overhaul. That includes changing your diet and excercise, what you do for hobbies, possibly what you do for a living, isolating all the factors that exacerbate or contribute to your disease and modifying them to give yourself the best shot at a longer life. The #1 recommended cure for Heart disease is Lifestyle modification - not just moving near a hospital so you will be closer when you have a heart attack, but changging your diet an exercise and making a total lifestyle overhaul. With the large majority of cancers, your doctor will suggest lifestyle modification to address contributing factors - removing carcinogens, being more proactive with checkups (for an addict that would equate to doing outpatient recovery programs) and often diet and exercise.
It doesn't matter if I'm recovering from cancer or addiction, I'm not the one trivializing a man's death because he had a disease - the accuracy of the information I've given you should speak for itself and can be checked, so I'm assuming that question is to develop some sort of ad hominem stance against my argument.
So you're admitting that addiction is a disease, but wanting to rank it on a level with diabetes? They're both predisposed to genetic markers that increase your chances of becoming afflicted (just like cancer), they both are subject to triggers and causes from your environment (just like cancer), and there are children with diabetes that never had a donut fetish, addicts with a drug addiction that have never taken a drug that wasn't prescribed to them, and there are people with lung cancer that never smoked a cigarette. What' funny is that you guys choose those 3 diseases to combat addiction's classification as a disease, and the vast majority of people with those 3 diseases have made choices that either led to their disease or complicated it. So I guess the guy who smoked 2 packs a day for 20 years, his cancer doesn't put him on the same level as someone with a kind of cancer where the environmental contributions aren't so clear?
I'm all for personal responsibility, and I really wish there was more of it in the world. I'm very much proud of your acceptance of personal responsibility (even though I don't know you, it sets a very good example for everyone when you can admit fault, which is one of the hardest things a lot of people do). People have went from denying addiction is a disease, to admitting it's a disease but wanting to rank it alongside a "mid-tier" of diseases that warrant a lesser level of respect, to saying Hoffman wasn't a man. You go to a funeral to pay respects, not leave advice in the guestbook or tell the widow there was a better way. There is a thread about personal responsibility somewhere on this site I'm sure, and there are even self help groups about improving your life through personal responsibility - this is a thread commemorating the passing of a great actor though, and no matter who he was or what he did he didn't ask for our eulogy, and in respect of the people that do care we owe it to the family to at least let his body get cold before anybody attacks the 9% of Americans that are addicts as cowards, low lifes and 'not men' on the behalf of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It's a shame that I've posted 2 or 3 times here and haven't gotten the chance to say how good he was at his job.
It could have been me.
In 1970, I was injured in the line of duty while serving in the U.S. Army Engineers. I was medically discharged, and in the year that followed was treated at the V.A. hospital in Washington D.C. Lots of pain killers were made available to me, and it was an easy thing to swallow a pill and feel great. Out of the hospital, I was given V.A. vocational training, and still lots of pills. Enough pills that I started to like taking them. Then my second child was born. With two kids and being trained for another line of work, I had a choice. I choose to flush the pills down the toilet and take some Tylenol and suck it up. I had a wife and two kids, and the responsibility that went with them.
I had a family to take care of. That's what a man does, he takes care of his family, not pop pills because he's in pain and wants to go off to never never land. You stick it out. This guy leaves his family hanging. Yeah, less than admirable behavior. He chose not to act like a man, and not take care of his family. So don't expect me to have any respect for that kind of individual. I admit I don't understand the addictive personality. But if I could say no to the drugs and go on with life, then somebody with Hoffmans kind of money should be able to.
Somewhere along the way, an addict chose to be an addict. A cancer victim didn't ask of the cancer. Making that kind of analogy is moronic.
The only thing moronic or ignorant here is the people acting like the Westboro Baptist Church and using the death of someone as a pulpit to condemn them and spread inaccurate and baseless opinion. Money doesn't help if the only known treatments are affordable to everyone, but there is no cure.
Here is the medical stance regarding addiction as a chronic disease:
http://archives.drugabuse.gov/about/welcome/aboutdrugabuse/chronicdisease/
Until someone cites a peer reviewed medical study or at least a more authoritative source on the issue than your own backwards logic about addiction being a choice or Willpower being approved by the FDA for the treatment of disease, there is nothing more to say. I haven't heard any argument against addiction as a disease reference a single fact, and most of you are repeating the same inaccurate assumptions after they've already been refuted. I won't repeat myself, and I won't trivialize addiction or cancer by continuing to post responses to the same people making the same remarks that have already been refuted .
