A core concept evolving over the past decade is that drug addiction is a disease of the brain that develops over time as a result of abusing drugs and alcohol.

Some of the consequences that a person experiences is a virtually uncontrollable craving for drugs and alcohol, the seeking and use of drugs and alcohol that interferes with an individual’s functioning within the family and society. In most cases, an illness such as this usually requires inpatient chemical dependency treatment.

• we understand the brain functions through which drugs acutely modify mood, memory, perception, and emotional states.
• Using drugs habitually over time changes brain structure and function in ways that can persist long after the individual stops using them.
• Addiction is conceived through an array of neuro-adaptive changes and the lying down and strengthening of new memory connections in various circuits in the brain.

We do not yet understand all of the actual functions, but the research demonstrates that those long-lasting brain changes are responsible for the distortions of cognitive and emotional functioning that characterize addicts, particularly including the compulsion to use drugs that is the essence of addiction. It is as if drugs have high jacked the brain’s natural motivational control circuits, resulting in drug use becoming the sole, or at least the top, motivational priority for the individual.
This brain-based view of addiction has generated substantial controversy, particularly among people who seem able to think only in polarized ways.

• Many people erroneously still believe that biological and behavioral explanations are alternative or competing ways to understand phenomena.
Modern science has taught that it is much too simplistic to set biology in opposition to behavior or to pit willpower against brain chemistry.
• Addiction involves inseparable biological and behavioral components.
• Many people also erroneously still believe that drug addiction is simply a failure of will or of strength of character.

Comprehensive research contradicts that position completely.
It is important to note, that the recognition that addiction is a brain disease does not mean that the addict is simply a hapless victim. Addiction begins with the voluntary behavior of using drugs and addicts must participate in and take some significant responsibility for their recovery. Thus, having this brain disease does not absolve the addict of responsibility for his or her behavior, but it does explain why an addict cannot simply stop using drugs using willpower alone.