The doctors' foot in the shoes of sociologists; A critique of Medicalization of Addiction in Iran

Objectives: Medicalization of society means the penetration and spread of medical discourse to subjects and areas of the community that was previously available to other discourses and different types of knowledge. Drug addiction, as a multidimensional social phenomenon, gradually emerged from the social sphere and was dominated by medical discourse. This research tries to identify, on the one hand, the most important appearances of the medicalization of addiction and, on the other hand, to identify the social contexts that have created this condition. The method: The method of this study is analysis of content and sampling is based on purpose sampling of the type of maximum variation. Sampling continued to reach the theoretical saturation. The analysis of the content of the interviews was done by Strauss and Corbin’s three-steps coding process (open, pivotal and selective coding). Findings: Findings show “medical orbital” is core central of the medicalization of addiction which has three main categories: “sicken-assumption of addiction”, “drug therapy”, and medical-based treatment”. Also, central core of the social contexts of medicalization of addiction is “medicalization of society” which has three main categories: “Commercialization of treatment”, “culture of sickness-assumption of addiction”, and “master-medic”. Conclusion: As a result, it can be argued that medicine, as the dominant discourse in today's Iranian society, has affected most of the constituencies. And major social issues, including addiction, have been moved from the field of social analysis to the realm of medicine and other individualist sciences.