ABSTRACT
The disease concept of dependence says that people who have the alcohol dependence syndrome may ‘look different in France and Utah’ but actually ‘always’ have a ‘compulsion to take alcohol’. The disease concept of dependence is essentially a less dogmatic version of the disease concept of alcoholism. The disease concept of dependence is theoretically weak in exactly the same two connected areas as the disease concept of alcoholism. Whether the dependence syndrome is meant to be a core psychobiological construct, or an everything-included, multidimensional construct does not really matter, since whichever is the focus of interest, the concept of dependence is superfluous in either case.
