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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 6 page paper looks at addiction discourses as they are applied to drug addictions, assessing the perceptions of drug addiction and the way that addiction discourses impact general societal attitudes and treatment approaches. The bibliography cites 7 sources.
Page Count:
6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TS14_TEdrugaddis.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
with determining the way treatment takes place. The use of addiction discourses has been referred to as a myth and although there is a wealth of disagreement it may be
argued that this fulfils a social function in the concept and treatment of addiction (Gibson et al, 2004). It may be argued that the perception of drug addiction being
a physiological or a medical phenomenon only developed in the latter part of the nineteenth century, following the development of the hypodermic syringe (Keene, 1997). With this invention it was
possible for doctors to prescribe opiates that could be injected. Prior top this opium use was not perceived as a problem, and was openly used, supporting the opium trade that
took place with India (Keene, 1997). At about the same time there was increasing use of opiate containing painkillers in North America which was habit forming (Keene, 1997). By the
end of the nineteenth century the increasing reliance and dependence was being noted, and the theory of addiction where there was a physiological, and as such medical, approach being adopted
along with the concept of morality being applied to its use (Harding, 1988). In this context there is support for the argument of Levine (1978) that disease approach
to addiction was not a discovery that resulted from true medical research or scientific discovery, but resulted from a "transformation in social thought grounded in fundamental changes in social life"
(p165-6). This disease approach has lost a great deal of credibility (Peele, 1985), but there is an ongoing use of the cultural discourse found in the way that the
idea of a individual or family pathology has been popularized. Keene (1997) puts forward that argument that the reason for the disagreement and controversies regarding addiction discourses is part
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