a spectrum of apples, oranges, lemons, plums?

Howard Wetsman picks apart the spectrum approach of the DSM5

Making a spectrum out of the illnesses that have been put in the substance use category of DSM IV is like making a spectrum out of an apple, an orange, a lemon, a lime, a blue fruit (if there was one) and a plum. You’d have the colors but your mixing different things. Sometimes a metaphor can be taken too far.

First there is the assumption that the substance use disorders actually hold together and are separate from other disorders in the DSM. It is an assumption and not one that is supported by the evidence of recent studies. DSM is concerned with behavior, not with biology. Illness is biology from which behavior can manifest, but it’s the biology that comes first. So before we look at the substance use disorders and say they can be made into a spectrum we have to see if they are separate from other things that look like addiction (overeating, compulsive sex, compulsive gambling, etc.) and are the same as each other (that substance abuse is the same as addiction, only less of a problem).

The evidence I’ve seen suggests that it can’t be done. Biologically, addiction to opioids and addiction to sugar binging have more in common than addiction to opioids and abuse of opioids. There are a lot of reasons that people with normal brains choose to do stupid things with drugs, but there’s a real commonality about why people with addiction use. That commonality extends beyond drugs to anything that makes the reward system go “Bam.” When we try to put people with normal brains who abuse substances in addiction treatment they don’t understand what we’re talking about. When we try to put addicts in treatment with people with normal brains they get confused and try to “use like a normal person.”

Read the rest of the post here.

Related articles

• Study: Food Addiction Might Soon Get Diagnostic Status (medindia.net)
• DSM 5 Substance Use Disorders: A Concise Summary (addictionandrecoverynews.wordpress.com)