What if calling addiction a disease is actually making it harder to recover from?

In this episode Clive, Matt and Dom tackle one of the most contested questions in recovery – is addiction a disease or a choice? And why does the answer matter?

Matt shares the raw reality of going on complete autopilot – making the conscious decision not to use, then finding himself calling his dealer anyway without knowing how it happened. Is that a disease? Or is it something else entirely?

Clive draws the distinction between disease and dis-ease – the idea that addiction isn’t a broken brain but an off-centre life reaching for the quickest way back to balance. Dom traces the surprising origins of the disease model and asks whether we were ever meant to stay stuck.

Together they explore the rat park experiment, the role of environment and poverty in addiction, the autopilot analogy, and why focusing on making life better might be more powerful than any label we put on the behaviour.

This is not a clinical podcast. It is three people who have lived it, thought about it, and found their own way through – talking honestly about what actually worked.

If you have ever felt like addiction was something happening to you rather than something you were doing, this conversation might shift something.

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