To the Editor:
Re “Calling Addiction a Disease Is Misleading,” by Carl Erik Fisher (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, Jan. 16):
Dr. Fisher’s opinion piece about addiction was misleading and polarizing. His arguments ignore decades of biomedical and behavioral research that have taught so much about the nature of substance use disorder, as it is now called, and what to do about it.
First, the originators of the concept did not say that addiction is only a brain disease; we acknowledged how important behavioral and social elements are to its development and to recovery.