Sunday, February 12, 2012
"What is Addiction" Reading Response
At first glance I was really intimidated by this reading. It is 18 pages long and we were told that it was from a textbook. But as I was reading it I came to find that it was a surprisingly easy and interesting chapter to follow. The language and vocabulary used in this text can be understood by the average reader. Any terminology that was used was defined. The topic itself was very interesting, and the paragraphs were broken up by diagrams, boxes, and even an interactive exercise on page 16. I enjoyed this exercise that gave a case example, and I got to apply what I had just read in the text to this exercise that served to further reinforce what the text was saying. The text spoke a lot about the difficulty of defining addiction, which reminded me of how difficult it is to define health in general. There was a very interesting metaphor that the author uses on page 15 about the blind men encountering an elephant and trying to depict what it is. Depending on the different parts of an elephant that the various blind men touched, they all gave very different descriptions that were correct in a sense but not a complete or sufficient definition that encompassed a whole elephant. This metaphor created an interesting visual that added more depth to describing the difficulty of defining addiction.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thanks, @Nesa, for posting first.
ReplyDeleteEveryone else, please submit your response to the reading as a comment to this post.
I agree with Nesa that the text was easy to read, had a lot of useful diagrams and was interesting but I didn't think that William Miller made a very persuasive argument. The whole article he was talking about the difficulties of defining addiction and how he hoped that DSM-V retreated back to the categories of severity on the continuum rather than the abuse/dependence terminology that DSM-IV picked up but I thought that Miller lacked in really persuading the reader why his argument was strong. On the other hand, I did think he did a good job of making it readable for all and defining the terms was very helpful. I also thought it was really interesting the way he introduced the seven dimensions of addiction by claiming that people only look at the most severe symptoms when classifying someone as an addict and there’s really many more symptoms than people are aware of. I can say that I have definitely been a culprit of that. The section on the History of DSM was very interesting how the definition of addiction has evolved so much since the 1950s and it was interesting to read because it compared and contrasted each new DSM of the decade. For example, DSM-II evolved from DSM-I not only by proposing several new terms of alcoholism and drug addiction but also by stating signs and symptoms of an addict. I thought the order of the paper flowed well, except I don't know that I would put causes at the end of the article. In this section, Miller also counter-acted the abuse/dependence terminology by stating that this caused “diagnostic orphans” but I think he should have mentioned his view earlier in order to make his claims stronger. Also, to make his argument more persuasive, Miller should have written a conclusion that restated his argument with support for his claim. Overall, I thought it was a very interesting piece that I enjoyed reading and I learned a lot about the different dimensions, causes and history of diagnosing addiction.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nesa that the text was very simple to read despite how long it was, which always seems to make anything harder to read! The part of the text that stood out to me was the many different types of etiologies, or causes of the disease. I felt that this part paralleled directly to the problem of not being able to figure out how to define addiction in the first place. How can you define a term that does not even have a specific cause? Based on what a person believes to be the cause, ranging from the host, the drug, the community, or even the family, causes one to act differently towards how to react to the disease or even treat the addiction. It was interesting to learn that the DSM has struggled to define addiction and after reading this article I can completely understand why there is conflict with this term. However hard addiction is to define though, it is interesting that the idea of "bad health" continues to have a moral issue behind it despite the complexity of any term associated with it. Addiction in our society, whatever the range may be, is looked at in a negative light. However difficult addiction is to define, the moral judgement continues to back it up regardless.
ReplyDeleteI thought the addiction article was easier to read than most other articles we've been assigned. I found the text to be very thorough in explaining if not a little redundant. The paragraph headings were helpful in knowing what the piece was trying to communicate but I felt it made reading a little too choppy. Since this was an excerpt from a textbook I was not expecting too many aspects of creative writing, but there were some in the text and I feel like they were poorly done and distracting from the topic.
ReplyDeleteBoth the articles were really interesting to read. First, the article "What is addiction" provided me good understanding of addiction by giving seven dimensions of addiction which were use, problems, physical adaptation, medical harm, motivation for change, etc. They were well organized further explaining addiction in terms of history. The second article was more interesting to me as it compared consumerism and addiction. I agree with the author's idea that we need to focus more on spiritual values rather than materialistic values. Recently I've been feeling that I have become a little too materialistic compared to my childhood when I valued my feelings and friendship and so on. I think that consumerism is something that we get addicted more and more to physical things. Maybe it is time for us to think again about consumerism and try to give more attention to our mental well-being. This article made me look back on myself especially these days when I have been obssessed with shopping and buying trendy new stuff.
ReplyDeleteThe "What is Addiction?" article I found very long but an easy read. It was not a well-written piece to me because it was taken from a text book but it was full of information and facts. For me personally this type of writing was easier for me to follow then some of the past readings.
ReplyDeleteThe article in the Huffpost, "Viewing Consumer Culture through the Lens of Addiction" was a very different read for me. It was not as much writing as other articles and it was more quotes from other people like, movie producers and writers, substance abuse clinician, health researcher, psychotherapist, and social philosopher to see what their research has led them to believe. It was harder for me to see what the author, Charles Shaw's Argument was and how he was trying to persuade the reader. The people that he used in his article were credible people who knew what they were talking about and had background to their findings and beliefs. It was harder for me to read but it was interesting to see this type of writing.
Although the article "What is Addiction" was an easy read, it was unimpressive from a rhetorical standpoint. The headings and charts seemed to help move the reading along, but the charts didn't add much to the overall message and actually made the piece longer and slower to read. I think we can all easily visualize the concept of varying degrees of use and desire to change behavior without putting different labels on the same line with arrows at each end. the acronym DSM wears on me as a reader and keeps me searching for the next word on the page, sometimes a line ahead.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nesa's comment. The article, "What is Addiction?" was easy to follow and understand. I enjoyed that the last page summarized the main points. This article was engaging and the use of the elephant metaphor helped the reader understand the main argument. There are 7 dimensions and each works independently. Knowing just one does not help understand addiction.
ReplyDelete"What is Addiction?" was a lot easier to get through and much more well written than the previous reading, “Spaces and Classes”. A lot of tools were used to help the reader understand the content of the chapter such as the organization of sections with different layers of subtitles, the boxing of key sentences, easy-to-understand diagrams, and even exercises. Since this piece of writing was written for a textbook and aimed towards educating professionals, lots of information was given. Even though it was written well enough that you could have a general understanding of what the main concepts after one sitting, it would be hard for anyone to remember all of the details, definitions, and history. It is a reading that you would have a to study and re-read many times to fully understand and retain all of the information you are given, but the organization is done well enough that you would easily find or refer to any specific information you are looking for. In contrary, “Spaces and Classes” has a wall- of-text” style that would make it very difficult to find information or refer to.
ReplyDelete