I always claimed that addiction was created by AA.  However I’ve discovered proof that it existed as a disease well before.   Here is a quote from an article in the prestigious British Journal of Medicine from 1880 entitled “Chronic Morphinism”:

Chronic Morphinism is, it seems, a vice which appertains peculiarly to the medical profession in Austria.  Quite an incredible number of Dr Obersteiner’s colleagues have fallen victim to it; and he hints, not obscurely, that in his view there is poetical justice in the fact that this depraved and fatal taste should work most havoc among the class of men who, by carelessly prescribing the drug and instructing in the use of the hypodermic syringe, have been mainly instrumental in disseminating it.

The remedy first taken to allay pain, procure sleep, or tranquillise the system, is soon loved for its own sake, and becomes indispensable to common comfort.

And then when an attempt is made to discontinue it, the discovery is made that it has planted a worse grief than that which it eradicated.

The symptoms of morphinism are apparently pretty much in Austria what they are in England….  On the psychical side are to be noted loss of memory, suicidal tendencies, and a moral deterioration comparable to what is seen in chronic alcoholism.  Falsehood, which is first had recourse to in order to conceal or palliate the evil habit indulged in, soon pervades the whole mind, and the morphinist becomes the prolific father of lies upon all subjects, and even when the truth would serve as well.

So addiction really is a disease after all.  That causes lying.  And I am a drug addict and alcoholic.  I will return to take my seat at AA, and I would like to thank the Fellowship for keeping it warm for me all these years.