Adolescence: Maturing Out of Adolescence

Spontaneous remission of drugs or maturing out is a concept that is widely seen practically in people’s everyday lives. Also known as, natural recovery, maturing out of addiction is a general term given to a particular process that sees a drug user relinquish the habit of taking drugs as the problems that made him or her take drugs in the first place become less urgent and less salient. As this happens, the individual reaches a point whereby they can no longer continue to sustain their habits, and they eventually quit. However, numerous research challenge the notion that decrease in drug use disorders is usually age-related and attributable to the exponential increase in overall determination. Such hypothesis supports the understanding that addiction is progressive in nature and that this progress is exponential. On the other hand, biological research states that addiction is inherently a choice and by this premise; one can mature out of addiction. A good example being the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for addiction, which categorically states that people usually quit using illegal drugs by the age of 30 following economic and societal pressure (Heyman, 2013) . 

The fundamental biological nature of addiction has been the emphasis of extensive research over the years. Numerous findings have coerced both the public and experts into having the ideology that drug use is inherently compulsive. In light of this, the underlying question has always been whether users take drugs compulsively. Moreover, the perplexing practicality of maturing out of addiction presents another challenge. Nonetheless, according to quantitative choice principles such as the matching law, hyperbolic discounting and melioration, maturing out is plausible because drug addiction in its fundamental sense eventually comes back to being a choice (Heyman, 2013) . The ability of choice dispels the notions of the progressive nature of drugs or rather sheds light upon the possibility that maturing out of drug addiction is in essence, theoretically and practically attainable. 

Reference  

Heyman, G. (2013). Addiction and Choice: Theory and New Data.  Frontiers In Psychiatry ,  4 , 31. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00031