To clarify, addiction is a disease. According to Dr Drew Pinsky in an interview on "The Eyes of Nye" (yes, that's another Bill Nye show)
> The definition of a disease for me would be 'an abnormal physiological process brought on by a relationship between the genetics of the individual and the environment. That path of physiology would create a set of signs and symptoms that progress in a predictable way that we would call a 'natural history' and by affecting the natural history we create a predictable response to treatment [...] and addiction does fit that, but people get hung up on where the physiology goes wrong. They don't understand that it's a brain disease.
> The definition of a disease for me would be 'an abnormal physiological process brought on by a relationship between the genetics of the individual and the environment. That path of physiology would create a set of signs and symptoms that progress in a predictable way that we would call a 'natural history' and by affecting the natural history we create a predictable response to treatment [...] and addiction does fit that, but people get hung up on where the physiology goes wrong. They don't understand that it's a brain disease.