What is addiction? Is it a disease over which one has no control and must therefore submit to a 12-step program? Is it the malfunctioning of a brain genetically predisposed to get hooked on some chemical or group of chemicals?
My answer is that addiction is simply the dark side of consumerism, which is the demand-side of capitalism. Those who profit from selling us stuff need consumers. They need not just consumers, but regular reliable consumers who will keep buying and using products so that the company is assured of continued success and can inspire people to buy shares in their stock. The line between devoted use of a product and addiction is too blurry to make any definitive statements about it. People getting hooked on some product is just part of the downside of capitalism, the inevitable “cost of doing business”. The bottom line in selling a product is getting many people to use it a lot and inevitably people will misuse or overuse a product.
Think about the specific items people easily get addicted to. Sugary empty-calorie junk food results in many people getting heart disease, diabetes, and becoming obese, but the stated goal of junk food manufacturers is merely to boost sales. Cigarettes are very addictive and expensive, yet more smoked by lower-income people who are already struggling to make ends meet. Alcoholic beverages dominate ads for live sports and the addictions to these are just the downside for the companies, especially beer-makers, that make billions in profits. Gambling casinos obviously profit from addiction and are often suggested as a solution to boost a local economy, despite the many lives ruined. Basic all-American products have addiction as a considerable risk but the universality of these products somehow casts a rosey glow on them. The happy indulgences for most users wash away the worries of potential abuse as the rosey glow of hedonistic consumption, the high, the buzz, the good feelings of the given product, all get to the core of why consuming is the engine of capitalism.
The addictive use of products is not a moral issue from the capitalist perspective because the overall marketplace of competing suppliers and those buying comprise a self-regulating dynamism possessing its own intelligence where mistakes get corrected, products get better, and people get higher levels of satisfaction over time. This sounds logical, right? If there are some existential components omitted from the analysis, then leave these to those bearing the external costs, the addict him- or herself, the rehab people, mental health professionals, pop psychology gurus like Dr Phil. The balance sheet for an opiate drug, for example, looks at sales, but bogus prescriptions, people using the drug outside medically valid reasons and to excess, are not anywhere in the analysis. If these facts were included in the drug company’s analysis there would be actions taken to make sure crooked doctors and the “pill mills” churning out drugs for addictive usage don’t evade law enforcement. Whatever laws there may be to stop these crooks are not enforced and this lack of enforcement contributes to the bottom line, profit. Consumption of the product by addicts helps the drug company making it.
The great profit-enhancing aspects of addiction are that there are many types of treatment or rehab for addictions and these create lots of jobs for people along with the addicts being cured (or not). Much of the time addiction and treatment comprise a feedback loop because the treatment doesn’t work, so the person must do some treatment again and maybe many times. The net profits generated by overconsumption of the product one is addicted to followed by a treatment comprise a huge amount of income for all those involved and the economy is certainly stimulated by this feedback loop.
The fact is, given our state of health care, addictions continue to run rampant, and the need to addictively use something is just as potent, if not more so, than the treatments available for it. People get enough pay-off from their addictions to sabotage their treatments to resume their addictions. So to call addiction a tragedy amidst the collective ineptitude of the health care community to counter the desire to be addicted is essentially a denial of the harsh reality that addiction is a way of modern life. If one sacrifices oneself at the altar of addiction then one is simply part of the fabric of a consumption-based society. Consumption is the heart and soul of modern American life, whether it’s food, drugs, behaviors, music, cable TV, programs on netflix and hulu and amazon prime, or images on plasma screens, etc.
Ultimately it is an individual’s struggle to weigh one’s role as a consumeristic monad, a nano-entity in the collective consuming culture of which they play a part as one bee in a swarm or one bird in a flock, a mass in the apparent possession of a single mind guiding the collective behavior to do something. One may take alarm at “crossing the line” into addiction and take remedial action or one may “go with the flow” and continue to ride addiction’s wave. Life is a bitch and then you die, so you might as well live today, right?
One may be sincere and acknowledge the destruction one does to one’s life and sincerely get treatments, once or as often as it takes, on the road to healing. This journey of living modern life entails mistakes, mistakes of excessive consumption, for which the hard knocks they impart on one’s soul there is no substitute as an existential teacher.
Think about the more innocuous forms of addiction like eating too many brownies or muffin bites or cookies or some other “comfort food”. Or consider binge watching some awesome cable or netflix program. Addiction in these forms shows its deep-rootedness in our lives. Too much of something IS what the doctor ordered. You eat “just one” more cookie. Then another and another and the just one more becomes 10 more. You feel bad in your tummy or conscience and do the same damn thing again. And say that knocks a year or two off your life. It was worth it.
What about binge drinking as a rite of passage? I recall hating the taste of beer and training my taste buds to like it. There was the mandatory ritual of chugging beers to keep up with your buddies. Watch TV commercials today and nothing’s changed. Beer and sports go together as marketed by the entertainment conglomerates to coach dutiful young male consumers. Put that lime wedge in your Corona on that beach with the Kate Upton look-a-like. Quit being a wuss, postpone your homework, chores, call in sick the next morning, and drink another lime-wedged Corona and enjoy the real or fantasied lady with you.
Yo-yo dieting is the quintessential American pastime. Plus, there are all those “don’t give up anything diets” with yummy desserts included. You can have it all, lose weight….and gain it all back again BECAUSE YOU WANT IT ALL, after all. Who are these diet-sellers conning anyway? You got to believe, then fail, then believe again. It’s this struggle that pads profits and fuels the economy.
Addiction is derived from Latin to reward or assign. This captures the true self-indulgent aspect of addiction, a component of consumeristic capitalism. If one hurts oneself with the excessive consumption of something, one may blame some disease and follow a 12-step program or blame their brain’s biochemistry or “wiring” that seems to mandate addiction. If any of these attributions of causation produce successful treatment, then that’s terrific. For me, I try to understand addiction and look at it from many perspectives, learn from my past experiences with it, and simply move forward. I don’t presume to know what’s best for any given individual because we are all unique and must forge our own paths forward and hopefully get better over time.