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Rida Khan

Professor Flores

ENG-1101

14 November 2018

Rhetorical Analysis

Michael Botticelli’s TED talk, “Addiction is a disease. We should treat it like one” was

given on October 2016. Michael Botticelli, who is a former director of the National Drug Control

Policy with Obama's administration presented a speech to his audience. The purpose of his TED

talk is to raise awareness relating to the addiction of substances, to meet the goal of making

others realize that it’s a true disease and needs to be cured and also treated like one. Also, to

change people’s perspective on addiction and to encourage them to take it more seriously.

Botticelli’s audience was mainly everyone in general from the government to the people. He

wanted to “change public policy” on how addiction was treated. Here are a few ways he

effectively persuade his listeners with the use of ethos, pathos, and logos.

Botticelli confessing about his past struggles in dealing with addiction and coming out as

a gay man was really hard for him. At a young age he struggled with determining his sexuality

and addiction considering he grew up in a family with it and was surrounded by it everyday.

Botticelli’s speech appeals to ethos by applying his own self to show his credibility. Botticelli

establishes trust to his audience by informing them about his own personal life struggles. This is

important to provide to keep the audience’s attention and to make sure they comprehend what

Botticelli is presenting. Botticelli shows his confidence in his words and actions when talking

which displays his credibility further.

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Botticelli displays the use of pathos, or emotion by a few statements he said in his speech.

For example, he said, “Like many of you, I’ve lost too many friends and family to this disease.

I’ve heard too many heartbreaking stories of people who’ve lost loved ones to addiction”, which

gets the audience to reminisce about their loved ones who passed away and effect their emotions

and feelings. Botticelli also talks about his sexuality contributing to the overuse of drugs and

alcohol, “The Supreme Court's decision to strike down the ban on same-sex marriage”, which

gets the audience to recall about others or their own struggles of addiction and sexuality. He

includes many techniques using pathos or emotion to get his objective across very effectively.

The use of logos, or logic, is the most effective persuasion technique in which Botticelli

incorporates in his speech becoming a big impact on his audience's perspective. Botticelli uses

many instances of logic such as when he said, “During 2014 alone, 28,000 people died of drug

overdoses associated with prescription drugs”, which surprises the audience on how often people

die from a disease they didn’t think was as serious. Then they start realizing that this disease is

still occuring and is currently affecting people’s lives today and a change needs to take place.

Another example that uses logos, “Both addicts and gays were struggling to get the health care

they needed because of stigma”, Botticelli hopes that this disease can be taken seriously with

medical improvement which will overcome these health crisis occurring. He is logically speaking

on how addiction is a true disease and needs to be treated as one as soon as possible.

Botticelli’s choice of ethos, pathos, and logos really addressed his message across

effectively making the right choices when speaking. This speech helped persuade the audience to

be more aware of addiction in the world and actually make a change about it. Providing current

and past events of his personal life I believe really caught the audience’s attention to understand

and comprehend what he was saying to get his point across. I believe Botticelli mainly did a
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good job gaining his audience’s trust by providing many sources to support his speech. The

message he was trying to get across was to encourage others to help fight addiction and change

everyone’s perspective on it. Botticelli’s goal was to make addiction be known as a true disease

and make it important in the medical community. Also to get help and get it treated as if it were

like any other disease. Botticelli did a good job in stating his thesis and providing his reason and

importance for this speech.

Works Cited

Botticelli, Michael. “Addiction Is a Disease. We Should Treat It like One.” TED Ideas
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WorthSpreading, Oct.2016,

www.ted.com/talks/michael_botticelli_addiction_is_a_disease_we_should_treat_it_like_

one/transcript?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomsh

are#t-164285.