Topic > Article by Neil Levy: Is Addiction a Brain Disease?

Argues that addiction is a behavioral disorder caused by the person's social environment and lack of resources. Levy believes that, in most cases, an addict does not have services or resources to remove themselves from the “environment” where drugs are constantly found. He also said that most of these drug addicts are physically unfit because they are poorly nourished and struggle with their own personal stress. Levy, in his article, emphasized that a person's environment, their health, and the resources they have available play a crucial role in determining whether or not the person will abuse drugs. Levy's arguments appear to support a strong position regarding addiction and its causes. However, his arguments appear to contain ambiguous words that can leave readers wandering over the actual definition of the word and even interrupt their reading. For example, Levy argues that addiction can only be defined as a disease if it includes pathological deviations from “norms of brain function” (Levy, 2013). It also mentions claims that addiction can lead to some “relatively minor” deficits and addiction can only cause impairments in “certain” social environments (Levy, 2013). These words, norms, minor, certain, can be seen as ambiguous words since they can have more than one meaning. Furthermore, Levy, in his article, seems to contradict some of his own