The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) has formulated a new definition of addition. The short version of the definition: Addiction is a "primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory, and related circuitry."

Dr. Michael Miller talks about the definition in a podcast here: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/addi...10168/1990535#

For those who prefer to read rather than listen, there is a quite detailed explanation of the new definition here: http://www.asam.org/DefinitionofAddi...ngVersion.html

The definition will be controversial for what we are told addiction is not.