There is a fine article in The Times today (link requires registration and may not work outside UK) by Mick Hume, bemoaning the decline of belief in individual responsibility and the growing use of the word “addiction” to describe almost every form of repetitive behaviour.
As the article can only be read through registration (grrr), here’s the opening gaff:
“We are becoming a nation of addiction addicts. Our society has become hooked on the habit of blaming human behaviour on some form of addiction. Apparently normal people – doctors, scientists, politicians (normal? ed), even journalists (ditto? ed) – seem incapable of resisting the urge to inject “addict” or “dependency” into any discussion of social problems.”
Exactly. The use of the word addict is used by policymakers to assault the idea of Man as a being with free will. We are all essentially passive victims. By doing so, it opens the floodgates to authortarian control of our lives. Look at the massive lawsuits against tobacco firms. Now I hold no brief for such firms, but the idea that people become so “addicted” to X or Y that they are unable to resist is surely contradicted by evidence all around us of people quitting such repetitive habits. Millions of people have in recent decades quit smoking, for example, like the good David Carr of this parish. Many have taken the painful step of quitting hard drugs or quitting alcohol. Of course change can be acutely difficult, which is why we praise folk who take the step of leading a healthier life.
Addiction is a word in danger of being rendered useless by applying it to just about every form of behaviour which is either frowned upon or a repeat form of activity.
Come to that, I suppose I must be “addicted” to blogging. Help me nurse, I am using Movable Type again!
Amen, Jonathan.
I quit smoking after eleven years back in February. Was I addicted? Well, that depends upon what you mean. If you mean “ill-disposed to quitting,” then yes. If you mean “not responsible for quitting,” or “incapable of quitting,” then obviously not.
My wife is a graduate student in Public Health, and damn, the nanny-state propaganda she gets is absolutely relentless. The notion of people as reflexive beings–the behaviorist conceit–is fed to these students in a wave of indoctrination that reaches near-Soviet intensity. Their notepads, pens, posters, slogans, t-shirts, and everything else are geared toward making Public Health students think in terms of government solutions to man’s helplessness in the face of environmental stimuli. I’m serious, it’s downright Kafkaesque.
I’m looking at the bright side here. Having successfully kicked the habit after decades of heavy smoking, I’m thinking this addiction thing has to be easier than they’re letting on. I’m thinking of taking up smack. Experimentally, you understand.
Quite a few addictions are about filling the endorphin receptors in the brain. There are a number of ways to do this.
Food, sex, heroin, exercise, etc.
To call these when done compulsively “addictions” is quite in line with modern science.
What is not in line is to focus on a particular method – heroin – and declaring it illegal.
The lack of understanding of brian chemistry is the greatest impediment to ending the drug war.
http://floyd.best.vwh.net/weblog/2003_02_16_archive.html#89468137
is an article I wrote on a number of ways to fill the endorphin receptors. Big Macs and chocholate. Yummm.
Addiction as far as I have been able to figure out is about pain relief. When it comes to relieving pain people don’t have much self control. It is why torture works.
To talk about personal responsibility without relieving pain is not in keeping with Western tradition. It all comes about due to the mistaken understanding of the nature of addiction. People in chronic pain chronically take drugs for pain relief. What makes the subject so difficult is that PTSD is not yet recognized by western medicine as real pain.
http://windsofchange.net/archives/003370.html
The above covers the topic of the nature of addiction.
I do believe the whole concept of “addiction” is as superstitious as the phlogiston explanation of combustion.
Pain memories decay over time. Which is why one year an “addict” can’t quit and the next year he can.
Again I put it down to mis-education.
Article with links to the genetic nature of addiction where the alles for tobacco addiction are discussed. It turns out that if tobacco is not a problem heroin is not likely to be a problem either.
It is amazing how much you can get right even when coming from the wrong premise.
I’m entirely with Johnathan on this. Indeed, I found it quite distressing that the Sunday Telegraph’s usually sensibly sceptical Robert Mathews chose to give credence to the pseudo-scientists and lawyers hyping the ‘addictiveness’ of fast food, in yesterday’s edition.
Of course food scientists make their products taste pleasant and, of course, food which tastes pleasant is regularly eaten.
It’s a great pity that people have come to conflate ‘addiction’ with a lack of self control.
There’s an important progression to watch here. It will get more pronounced over the next few years, at least in the United States where 75 million Baby Boomers are edging into their fragile years.
Health becomes a priority as one feels one’s confidence in it begin to slide. By virtue of America’s graying demographics, its people will become ever easier to persuade toward policy initiatives couched as health matters. If that approach can be combined with the ever-seductive appeal of exculpation for one’s personal vices — smoking, drinking, overeating, what have you — on the grounds that they’re addictive, watch out! Addiction “research” and addiction litigation could well become the next really big thing, taking the baton from “environmental illness.”
Why shouldn’t food be as addictive as heroin?
It fills the same receptors heroin does.
How is the desire to relieve pain a symptom of lack of control?
It isn’t unusual to have beliefs that do not correspond to science. What is unusual is that libertarians, of all people, prefer their superstitions to actual scientific and medical knowledge.
Now what is also interesting is that America’s largest group of addiction councilors NAADAC agrees with my conclusion about the addiction situation.
You can read about that here:
NAADAC says: there are no addicts
In addition if you read the comments section here. You will find a councilor who agrees with my conclusion:
http://windsofchange.net/archives/003370.html
You are going to have to find a better defence against this rather than you don’t believe it or a person ought to be responsible. In addition since addiction is determined by genetics you are talking about supporting discrimination based on genetic differences. Add in the fact that it is trauma such as PTSD from military service that locks in the pain memories and you are about to find yourselfs without defences on the losing side of the argument.
What you are asking is that those not personally responsible for their pain (such as victims of sexual assault) forgo pain relief. This is a no sale. Every one who pushes this line will wind up in the heartless bastard category. Deservedly so.
Well of course lawyers are going to take advantage of our superstitions. It is their job.
The answer is not to rail against the lawyers but to give up our superstitions.
The counter to this lawyer nonesense is that relief of pain is none of the government’s business. That doctors must recognise addiction for what it is and treat the pain instead of treating the “addiction”.
This whole line if properly followed is the way out of the drug war.
I’m surprised that such bright fellows as yourselves lack the immagination to see it.
Sex is addictive for the same reason food is. Where are the lawyers? Where is the SEA (Sex Enforcement Administration) ?
Exercise can be addictive. Look for suits against exercise machines.
This way is maddness.
What is required here is that you give up your prejudices, learn the science, and THINK. How will you use the science to defeat the enemies of liberty before they take away your right to eat the food you like. Or to exercise. Or have sex.
The lawyers are taking a bit of the truth and running with it. Your only defence is all the truth.
If you believe heroin is addictive you must also believe food is addictive. They fill the same receptors in the brain.
You have two choices to reconcile the differences. Food is addictive. Or heroin is not.
M. Simon writes:
“You have two choices to reconcile…”
Then again, there may be a third.
Three progressively excited posts in the space of a few hours, when earlier attempts have failed to elicit a response, suggests to me that endorphins might just as easily be stimulated by posting as wolfing a Big Mac.
Don’t tell me that Nanny is about to come after blogging…?
I do see some differences, such as food having more nutritional value than heroin.
It seems to me that the legitimate medical sense of addiction – back in the days when doctors had a slightly more general education – was a craving for a normally non-essential substance. For sure drugs like heroin or nicotine progressively alter your brain chemistry to make themselves seem essential, but this is different.
We crave food because past creatures in whom the craving for food persisted survived and animals which could ignore or forget their hunger died out and passed on fewer of their genes.
Addictive drugs as we normally understand them, and as doctors used to understand them, gain a grip by accidentally simulating cravings like those for food, sleep, water etc which really are essential for creatures such as us to survive.
I’m coming round to the idea that people get hooked on various substances and compulsive rituals in order to avoid confronting the major problems that define their lives. It represents an irrational retreat from rationality since no part of the outside world changes just because they got high.
One of the reasons that some people can’t confront their problems is that from their deepest depths they don’t believe that big life probs can be solved. And part of the reasons they believe that is that their creativity has been persistently crushed by authoritarians of all shapes.
If you’re looking for a theory of addiction then you need a theory that explains:
1. Why some people can’t give up X
2. Why some people have given up X
3. Why external success makes it easier to give up X
4. Why the same person can respond very differently to X according to the context
5. Why some people have taken X all their lives without any worries so far
It seems unlikely that such a theory could be a scientific one, because varieties of ‘external success’ and ‘context’ cannot be differentiated by any set of mechanical rules.
My guess is that the theory will make more reference to minds than to genes. Genes may help determine the spectrum of addictive substances, but an addict who quits X without fixing his underlying probs will probably just switch to Y. And Y might not be a chemical substance, it might be, say, a superstitious ritual.
The Times picked one of the weaker arguments, addiction, in trying to make the point about individual responsibilities.
The US has become a nation of victims as well. I wouldn’t highlight the addicts, necessarily, as an example of this. I would highlight the various groups who demand ‘special consideration’ because they are victims of (choose one and add more): men, ‘the system’, racism, poverty, etc ….
The ‘victims’ excuse/explain all sorts of behaviour by classifying themselves as victims. They aren’t responsible for their crimes, for example, because they are victims of something that causes them to commit crimes. We can’t treat them as criminals, we must treat them as ‘victims’.
Nobody is responsible for his/her actions as long as they can claim some sort of victimhood. The ‘perpetual victims’ are never responsible for anything. They pass the responsiblity on to some other group.
mark,
Is relief from pain essential?
Depends on wheter you are the one feeling the pain.
The whole premise of the drug war (currently mostly unrecognized) is the denial of relief to those in pain.
Once recognition comes the war is over.
If you really believe in the old ideas then you have to explain why not every one who tries heroin doesn’t get adicted. If you say genetics then you must admit for some heroin will never be a problem. That some is about 80% of the population.
But that leaves you with a second problem. Of those with genetic susceptability only about 1/2 those who try the drug get addicted.
In addition you must explain why about 5% of those “addicted” quit every year without therapy or detox. If they are “addicted” how can they quit?
I can explain all these phenmenon based on my genetics/trauma theory.
You will also have to explain why addiction rates are higher for soldiers in a war zone than for the average person.
Now let me add a kicker. In America mental health officials are coming around to the view that childhood chronic drug use is a marker for child abuse.
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/11/22/edms112202.htm
Tom Robinson,
Thanks Tom. Finally a rational thinker in the crowd.
Let me take a stab at the questions. They are very good.
1. Why some people can’t give up X
Because people in severe pain will not willingly give up pain relief.
2. Why some people have given up X
Because pain memories decay over time.
3. Why external success makes it easier to give up X
Success generates endorphins. The more endorphins the body generates the less external need.
4. Why the same person can respond very differently to X according to the context
Before or after severe emotinal trauma?
5. Why some people have taken X all their lives without any worries so far
No genetic problem – the vast majority(80%).
No emotional trauma – 1/2 of the remaining 20%.
=============================
I document all the above in the articles I have referenced.
In addition the NAADAC comes to the same conclusion I do.
To quote the Firesign Theatre here: “Everything you know is wrong”.
PTSD and similar emotional problems is the hidden key to almost all “addictions”. People take drugs to relieve their pain. If it is for relief of pain such taking may be a good idea. If it is for not dealing with the pain it may be a bad idea. Just as it is for pain with physical causes.
In any case taking drugs for emotional trauma is rational if it allows you to function better than you could without drugs.
Where we go wrong in all our studies of addiction is to assume the behavior is irrational.
If you assume it is rational everthing comes into focus.
Pain relief is why government is so inneffective in dealing with drug “abuse”. They can’t stop it because drugs are not the problem. Pain is the problem.
Addiction problems are not about “responsibility” or “morality”. They are about pain. Who would say that pain relief is irresponsible as a general rule? Who would say that pain relief is immoral as a general rule?
In general I would agree that there is no excuse for addiction. Where I disagree is that I believe there is a rational reason.
If any of you would prefer science to argument read my articles. Read them with the view that addiction specialists agree with my view of the situation.
As a cross check also be advised that I came to my conclusions before I found out about the NAADAC.
Chris Josephson,
Most of those who claim victim status are victims of government. Just not in the way that they think.
If heroin was legal and freely available to those in need there would be more heroin “addicts” and fewer food “addicts”. In general heroin is a less harmful way to fill the endorphin receptors than food.
Same goes for heroin vs. alcohol.
Had government not got between people and what they want we might have made the connections sooner.
Instead we took the easy way out and let the religiouly motivated moralists convince us that drugs were filled with the demon of addiction and that the demon would grab you by the throat and never let go. In other words the rankest of superstition.
Food is the opiate of the people?
Press: “wild-eyed man sues Samzidata for turning him into compulsive blogger”
you read it here first.
Most of what people think they know about addiction, even heroin addiction, is a myth put about by the state as justification for regulation. Addiction is a behavior that people choose. Most people can stop their addictive behaviors simply by choosing to. Most people stop smoking by simply stopping smoking. Most heroin addicts control their dosing and many limit it to weekends or otherwise fit it around their otherwise productive lives. Excruciating cold turkey withdrawal is a myth, for the most part, that regulators and addicts both have a stake in perpetuating as an excuse for what they do.
From an addict’s perspective, which is the only perspective that counts to a libertarian as long as they aren’t bothering other people, their addictive choices are perfectly rational, whether made for “pain relief” or merely for entertainment. Sitting in front of the telly eating Big Macs is hardly less harmful to you than sucking down booze or cigarettes, after all.
Check out Jacob Sullum’s articles H and Addiction is a Choice.
‘I Can’t Help Myself’
Is Addiction a Matter of Choice?
By John Stossel
“The United States has elevated addiction to a national icon. It’s our symbol, it’s our excuse,” says Stanton Peele, author of The Diseasing of America.
There are conflicting views about addiction and popular treatments. So, we talked with researchers, psychologists and “addicts” and asked them: Is addiction a choice?
Publicity about addiction suggests it is a disease so powerful that addicts no longer have free will. Lawyers have already used this “addict-is-helpless” argument to win billions from tobacco companies….
Addiction is as much a choice as having open heart surgery without anesthesia is a choice.
The reason people don’t do open heart without medication is that it hurts.
Just as being forced to give up drugs when you are still in pain hurts.
Addiction does not grab you by the throat. Pain does.
The whole idea of “addiction” is superstition.
No matter what Sollum or Stossel believe.
Their result is libertarian correct. However, their actual understanding does not conform to current science.
They are in effect arguing energy policy based on the phlogiston theory of combustion. They may arrive at the correct result but it will not be by a chain of correct reasoning.
M. Simon, it seems to me that you are talking about a tiny fraction of the universe of ostensibly addicted people. Just who exactly is it that you are referring to as being in such intense pain? Certainly not most of the people who are supposedly “addicted” to cigarettes, alcohol, or even heroin, apparently.
I have no problem at all with people who are in pain medicating what ails them, but this is not what is generally referred to as “addictive” behavior. In fact, the widespread belief in addiction to painkillers as part of the war on drugs has done enormous damage to therapeutic use of powerful painkillers in the US, as doctors are fearful of prescribing the good stuff because it may bring the Drug Enforcement Administration down on their heads.
Hello M. Simon!
Actually I don’t have to explain any of those things you mention.
I have not expressed a view on the war on drugs, pro or anti, on this thread. I just pointed out that there is a fundamental error in equating addiction to heroin with “addiction” to food. Actually I am liberal/libertarian on drug access – it does not seem to me the business of the state to interfere in what people give themselves. We’re on the same side there, I think.
This doesn’t alter the fact that equating addiction to various drugs or practices with the need for food is self-evidently silly and I felt it was a bit odd for it to be raised in an intelligent discussion.