Addiction

Pharmacology (Medicine), 1951

Pathological avoidance of responsibility and/or difficult feelings through the habitual use of chemicals which cause disruption of the brain’s natural functioning.

Before Freud’s catastrophic usage of cocaine, drunkards and opium-eaters were considered personally responsible for bad habits. The notion of it being a disease was not posited until 1956 by the AMA declaring alcoholism an illness, and is illustrated perfectly by the disagreement today among professionals between the term and “dependence”. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935 by Robert Smith and Bill Wilson, and the term was popularized from “habit” in 1951 by Arthur Grollman in Pharmacology and therapeutics.

• https://oed.com/view/Entry/2179
• https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=addiction
• https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=addiction
• https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/about-aa/historical-data
• https://www.pharm.stonybrook.edu/faculty/g/grollman