ABSTRACT
The harmful dysfunction view allows a distinction to be drawn between harmless dysfunctions that are not medical disorders versus harmful dysfunctions that are medical disorders. Addiction is classified as a mental/psychiatric medical disorder in official diagnostic manuals such as Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -5 and International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems -10. The evolutionary view of addiction is neutral on whether there is tissue damage from substance use. Addiction distorts and pathologically narrows the desire/choice process, but does not eliminate it, and this is the basis for many treatment strategies. Addiction is analogously a kind of overly strong “binding” of desire/choice systems to a kind of motivating reward they were not designed to handle. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) position that addiction is a brain disorder is repeated frequently in public statements and shapes research grant awards, so can justifiably be considered the standard current view among psychiatrists and researchers.
