| Title |
The Experience of Addiction as Told by the Addicted: Incorporating Biological Understandings into Self-Story
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, October 2012
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s11013-012-9283-x |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Rachel R. Hammer, Molly J. Dingel, Jenny E. Ostergren, Katherine E. Nowakowski, Barbara A. Koenig |
| Abstract |
How do the addicted view addiction against the framework of formal theories that attempt to explain the condition? In this empirical paper, we report on the lived experience of addiction based on 63 semi-structured, open-ended interviews with individuals in treatment for alcohol and nicotine abuse at five sites in Minnesota. Using qualitative analysis, we identified four themes that provide insights into understanding how people who are addicted view their addiction, with particular emphasis on the biological model. More than half of our sample articulated a biological understanding of addiction as a disease. Themes did not cluster by addictive substance used; however, biological understandings of addiction did cluster by treatment center. Biological understandings have the potential to become dominant narratives of addiction in the current era. Though the desire for a "unified theory" of addiction seems curiously seductive to scholars, it lacks utility. Conceptual "disarray" may actually reflect a more accurate representation of the illness as told by those who live with it. For practitioners in the field of addiction, we suggest the practice of narrative medicine with its ethic of negative capability as a useful approach for interpreting and relating to diverse experiences of disease and illness. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 16 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 7 | 44% |
| United Kingdom | 3 | 19% |
| Malaysia | 3 | 19% |
| Unknown | 3 | 19% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 8 | 50% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 5 | 31% |
| Scientists | 2 | 13% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 6% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 120 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 1 | <1% |
| Unknown | 119 | 99% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Master | 23 | 19% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 19 | 16% |
| Student > Bachelor | 19 | 16% |
| Researcher | 9 | 8% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 7 | 6% |
| Other | 15 | 13% |
| Unknown | 28 | 23% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 32 | 27% |
| Social Sciences | 24 | 20% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 10 | 8% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 7 | 6% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 3 | 3% |
| Other | 13 | 11% |
| Unknown | 31 | 26% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 11. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 14 January 2022.
All research outputs
#2,946,894
of 23,906,448 outputs
Outputs from Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
#203
of 622 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#20,748
of 178,559 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
#4
of 7 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,906,448 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 87th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 622 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.1. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its peers.
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