Substance Abuse: Disease or moral failure

Alcoholism Disease
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Institution: Drug addiction results from excessive use of harmful drugs. Drug abuse, alcoholism in particular is a common practice in many communities which leads to ruthless consequences to users. Debates on alcoholism and drug addiction as a disease and moral failure has been going on from the 1940s, when a study written and published by E.M. Jellinek named the ‘Phases Of Alcoholism’, went viral. At the time, Jellinek was considered the father of this model that postulated that alcoholism is a disease.
Alcoholism and drug addiction is a fatal disease that affects more than 10% of women and 20% of men, all of whom die 12 years earlier than their non-alcoholic counterparts. This is a figure that does not include the deaths due to homicide, road accidents, accidental deaths and suicide. Where the figures for the latter causes of death are incorporated, the figure rises immensely and even includes deaths of those that are victims of fatalities caused by the alcoholics such as road accidents (Faslink, 2014).
The disease is a combination of both the physical and mental illness. The first symptoms of the disease are actually emotional then mental and eventually the physical ones start showing. It is common to find that the alcoholics and drug abusers experience lack of self-control, such that when they start drinking they never know when they have had enough. Other than that they constantly have the craving for alcohol, which they cannot control and when they do it does not last given that th...