Maybe this argument is semantic, and hinges on what various parties would mean by “disease” or “not a disease.” This might call for a definition of the word “disease,” which would probably turn out to be harder to do coherently than it seems on first blush. I don’t see anyone here disputing that exposure to drugs changes a person’s physiology, or that taking drugs can make you sick.

But one consequence of thinking of something as a disease, right or wrong, fair or unfair, is that people tend to think of it as located only in the body, instead of in the interaction between body, including brain, mind, and situation. It is probably true of most, if not all, diseases that they could fruitfully be conceived of as an interaction among these three elements. Stress, placebo, social support, SES, etc., are all things that affect disease processes. It would be nice to retain the destigmatization we hope we’ve achieved with disease models of mental illness (although there is perhaps some reason to doubt how successful that’s been), but acknowledge and study the ways that social and psychological processes that affect it (as indeed, many people do). Addiction is a psychological phenomenon and it would be a little crazy to expect it to be unaffected by drastic changes in environment, though voluntary detoxification by the rats is indeed a striking result.

However, if this could be faithfully reproduced and it would demonstrate that given a choice and a good life, rats won’t voluntarily take drugs even though they can get as much of them as they’d like, that may be a strong indicator for why people choose to take drugs [outside of a medical/religious context]. Somehow I have the feeling that not everybody thinks having happy people making their own choices is a desirable outcome.