Agency Revisited
Addiction Services’ Clients’ Recovery in the Light of the Brain Disease Model of Addiction (BDMA)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11057014 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Egerer (0000-0002-3983-4489, University of Helsinki, corresponding author), Samantha Rundle (0000-0001-5589-4222, University of Toronto) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 178-192 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Drug Problems (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0091-4509 • E-ISSN: 2163-1808 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00914509251352400 |
| OpenAlex | W4411971461 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 68 |
Proponents and critiques of the brain disease model of addiction (BDMA) discuss its benefits and shortcomings in the light of agency. Yet, in this controversy, the experiences of the persons suffering from addiction have so far been widely neglected. This article investigates addiction service's clients’ experiences with their recovery in the light of the BDMA. It asks what role the BDMA plays in the recovery narratives of persons struggling with addiction. Eleven focus groups were conducted with clients of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. The interview protocol consisted of direct questions and discussion stimuli concerning the BDMA. The transcripts were analyzed by a thematic analysis. Participants both approved and disapproved the BDMA. The recovery narratives demonstrate how agency can be constructed without autonomy. Whereas the BDMA questions the agency of persons suffering from addiction in denying them autonomy, it helped as a symbolic resource in including the contradictive experiences with addiction into an authentic biography. This study thus urges addiction research to make use of agency in its entirety and take both, autonomy and biography, into account
Addiction · Agency (philosophy) · Brain disease · Disease · Psychiatry · Sociology · Internal Medicine · Medicine · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Mental Health Treatment and Access · Psychology · Treatment of Major Depression
The disease concept of alcoholism.
Scripting Addiction
Strong Feelings
Heavy Drinking
Addiction Is a Brain Disease, and It Matters
Neurobiologic Advances from the Brain Disease Model of Addiction
The ‘side effects’ of medicalization
Stigma, social inequality and alcohol and drug use
The discovery of addiction. Changing conceptions of habitual drunkenness in America.
Narratives of recovery from addictive behaviours
Implications of addiction diagnosis and addiction beliefs for public stigma
The Saturated Society
Rewriting the Soul
The Experience of Addiction as Told by the Addicted
Switching to a Social Approach to Addiction
Overcoming alcohol and other drug addiction as a process of social identity transition
Challenging the brain disease model of addiction
Agency lost and recovered
Gambling careers
Lay and professional concepts of alcohol dependence in the process of recovery from addiction among treated and non-treated individuals in Poland
Doing ontopolitically-oriented research
Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity
Recovery as a minor practice
The particularity of freedom and recovery from addiction in practice
Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament
The Disease Concept of Alcoholism
Describing recovery from drugs and alcohol
The mysterious case of the pervasive choice biography
Networks, resources and agencies
Exiting the Drug‐Addict Role
Tonic’, ‘fuel’ and ‘food’
When the Brain Leaves the Scanner and Enters the Clinic
Public and Private Practices
The Social Construction of What
Habits
Assemblages of Health
Addicts' narratives of recovery from drug use
Consumption and its discontents
Discipline and Punish
Addiction and the Brain-Disease Fallacy
When Alcohol Acts
Normality and Pathology in a Biomedical Age
Flexible Coding of In-depth Interviews
Conceptualizing Stigma
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |