Pathology of drug addiction

Poleg konvencionalnega bolezenskega modela odvisnosti od drog obstaja še mnogo drugih sodobnih teorij, ki poskušajo razložiti ta pojav, a zaenkrat še nobena teorija ni obveljala kot edina nesporno pravilna, saj imajo vse svoje prednosti in pomanjkljivosti. V diplomskem delu smo droge najprej opredelili in razvrstili, nato poiskali njihove bistvene značilnosti in raziskali njihovo delovanje. Naredili smo pregled najbolj znanih sodobnih teorij odvisnosti, jih med seboj primerjali glede na posamezna področja in preverili, v kolikšni meri so si pri razlagi pojava odvisnosti med seboj podobne. Ugotovili smo, da so si sodobne teorije med seboj v veliko pogledih precej enotne. Izkazalo se je, da vse nasprotujejo prepričanju, da je glavni vzrok za razvoj odvisnosti droga sama, prav tako pa vse zagovarjajo prepričanje, da so lahko posamezniki bolj ali manj ranljivi za razvoj odvisnosti. V pogledu na možnost popolne prekinitve odvisnosti se od večine sodobnih teorij, po katerih naj bi bila popolna prekinitev mogoča, razlikuje teorija odvisnosti kot samomedikacija, pri kateri posameznik tudi po dalj časa trajajočem prenehanju zlorabe drog ostaja občutljiv za ponovni zapad v odvisnost. Lewisov model pa popolno prekinitev zagovarja le do neke mere. Pri večini proučevanih sodobnih teorij se je izkazalo, da se oddaljujejo od prepričanj bolezenskega modela odvisnosti, kot izjema pa se je tu izkazala teorija odvisnosti kot samomedikacija, ki poskuša s svojimi ugotovitvami bolezenski model le dopolniti. Največja omejitev naših rezultatov je, da smo za primerjavo izbrali le nekaj sodobnih teorij odvisnosti, zato bi bilo v prihodnosti smotrno izvesti raziskavo, ki bi v primerjavo vključila še več različnih teorij razlage odvisnosti od drog.In addition to the conventional disease model of addiction to drugs, there are many other modern theories, which try to explain this phenomenon, but so far, no theory has prevailed as the sole one unquestionably correct, as all of them have their advantages and disadvantages. In our thesis, firstly we defined and classified drugs, described their basic characteristics and explored how they work. After that we included an overview of the most known modern theories of addiction and compared them considering different aspects of the phenomenon. We discovered that modern theories share the same views regarding many aspects of addiction. All of them oppose the belief that the main reason for the development of addiction is the drug itself. Additionally, all theories agree that some individuals are more vulnerable for developing addiction than others. Most of modern theories also share the view that a complete recovery from addiction to drugs is possible, however the theory of addiction as self-medication believes that an individual is susceptible to falling back into the addiction long after he stopped abusing drugs. Lewis’s theory of addiction advocates complete recovery only to a certain extent. We also established that most of modern theories distance themselves from the beliefs of the disease model of addiction. Regarding this aspect, the only exception is the theory of self-medication, which only tries to complement the disease model and not to disapprove it. The biggest limitation of our thesis’ findings is that we only included some of the modern theories, therefore future researches on pathology of addiction should also include other modern theories of addiction to drugs