Background: In recent years, we have repeatedly been told that addictions are a brain disease, leaving aside their classic biopsychosocial explanation.
Objective: To describe both models and discusses the weakness and reductionism of the brain disease model following the consumption of heroin by North American soldiers in the Vietnam war in the 1970s.
Method: A literature review of the Vietnam Veteran Study in relation to drug consumption.
Results: The soldiers greatly increased their consumption of heroin in Vietnam, but almost all of them ceased using it upon returning home. The analysis of the environmental factors related to this self-healing is a critique of the brain disease model of addictions because it cannot explain this or other studies.
Conclusion: The biopsychosocial model is still the best model to guide the field of addiction due to its utility, coherence, and efficacy in treatment.