A Disorder Of Choice?

Sally Satel reviews Gene Heyman's new book on addiction:

No amount of reinforcement or punishment can alter the course of an entirely autonomous biological condition. Imagine bribing an Alzheimer’s patient to keep her dementia from worsening, or threatening to impose a penalty on her if it did. This is where choice comes in: choosing an alternative to drug use. Heyman realizes how odd this might seem. How can otherwise rational people choose self-destruction unless they are diseased? This question was raised in colonial America. Dr. Benjamin Rush, also known as the father of American psychiatry, was among the first to promote the notion that alcoholism was a disease. And he did so not on the basis of medical evidence, Heyman reminds us, “but rather [upon] the assumption that voluntary behavior is not self-destructive.”