One interesting aspect of modern life in the Western World is the pathologizing, or "diseaseifying," of moral and character failures. Putting such failures into the disease category is a popular conceit for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the way it seems to let people off the hook. The victim thing.
But while even AA may make use of the disease metaphor, if you go to a meeting you will hear far more about character flaws than about disease. They are not into disease excuses for problem behavior.
I have been posting recently about satiable and insatiable appetites for pleasures - food and for other things, here: For the New Year: Satiety, the Animal Pleasures, the Cardinal Sins, and "Addiction," Part 2 and here The bad news: Eating less keeps your brain younger and more vigorous (with comments on satiety)
Despite the addiction meme, ordinary people still term those who eat more than they need "pigs," people who buy too much stuff "self-indulgent," people who habitually drink too much "drunks," and people with uncontained sexual efforts as "lechers" or as "nymphomaniacs" or "hos". Ordinary language reflects the common sense moral disapprobation of ungoverned behavior.
To say that they "lack a self-governing function" is the disease model, a defect model, but to use it requires turning a verb idea into a noun idea, by reification. The better form is "They do not govern themselves," or, better yet, "They do not exert themselves to govern themselves." The disease/defect model does not do justice to all of the people who must struggle mightily to resist all of the temptations that life offers.
Pajamas has a piece up about sex "addiction," Sex Addiction 101 - PJM's advice columnist on the Chinese food syndrome of loveless sex: no sooner satisfied, than feeling empty again.
While the article makes the obvious point that people seek pleasure and often seek to replace distress with simple pleasures, it entirely overlooks the moral, spiritual, and character dimensions of lechery as if it were a "chemical imbalance" instead of plain old-fashioned rotten, socially-inappropriate behavior. Sinful too, if anybody believes in sin anymore.
While it seems true that habitual pleasures change the brain a little, so does habitual self-control. Self-control offers many rewards, but few rewards of the instant, animal sort. There are good habits and bad habits. I don't know whether it is a sociological fact, but it seems as if the debauchery and bad habits, once the domains of the very rich and powerful and of the poor, have become democratized and, in the process, excused to some extent (eg the Oval Office BJs).
People I talk to with bad or unrestrained behaviors of all sorts tend to despise themselves for it, and view putting their behavior into a disease category as a condescension. Unless they are guilt-free sociopaths, they know that their behavior is self-indulgent and immoral. People can quit these things, with help and sometimes without help, if they want to or need to, but it means giving up a lot of instant gratification in exchange for, one hopes, better life results and less self-contempt.
