[Addictions and medicine]

The qualifiers of alcoholic, drug addict have been abandoned because marked by the image of a person who uses toxic and violates the social prohibition to gradually give way to the representation of a sick person in a state of psychological distress, medical and social. Control systems of drug regulation should consider the damage to the individual, their potential to induce drug dependence and the effects on the family environment or society. Some emerging substances are excluded, others are demonized, thus limiting the scope of prevention messages. The theoretical model of addictions is much more complex for 20 years, while psychopathological references remained identical. There has been a proliferation of work neurobiological, cognitive-behavioral and sociological observations. Medical and psychosocial approaches are complementary to the understanding of a complex multifactorial phenomenon but also of its treatment whose goal is to enable the person to rebuild his life and not simply to be supported for curbing its substance use.