Abstract

While the addiction treatment industry holds steadfast to the idea that addiction is a disease, and the choice theorists maintam to the contrary that it is justa choice, the truth is not as simple as either. The idea of addiction is a social construct that evolved over the 20th century to encompass increasingly morephenomena, while becoming increasingly conceptually less clear. Taking a complex dynamic systems approach, rather than relying on either the obscure disease notion or the naive choice concept allows us to conceive of the organism, the mind, and the addiction as essentially temporal and emergent. From thisperspective, physical, mental, and social causes operate within one dynamic system, allowing for genetic, developmental, and environmental effects to be understood within a single framework. Such a framework offers much greater hope for successfully addressing the issue than does either the currently dominant disease paradigm or choice theory.