The language used to label alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems exerts a significant influence on people experiencing such problems and on how professional helpers, policy makers, and the public view such people. Whether AOD-related problems are viewed primarily in terms of medicine (illnesses), psychology (habits), sociology (norms), morality (vices), religion (sins), or law (crimes) rests on a choice of concepts and words. America’s enduring and ambivalent relationship with psychoactive drugs is replete with cycles of stigmatization/de-stigmatization/re-stigmatization, criminalization/decriminalization/recriminalization, and medicalization/de-medicalization/re-medicalization. Put simply, we can’t seem to make up our collective minds about these substances and the people who use them to excess. As a result, we have not achieved any enduring consensus on the language that best depicts AOD-related problems (White, 2004).
This brief commentary is about two such word choices—abuse/abuser—whose origins and shortcomings we will explore. We join a growing list of addiction professionals who have advocated the immediate and permanent removal of abuse/abuser from the lexicon of the addictions field and discouragement of their use in broader cultural discussions of AOD problems. Five arguments support this recommendation. . . . . .
Read Full Commentary (PDF)
___________________________________________
