Addiction seems to be everywhere. Dear Abby recently answered a question about texting and facebook addiction, and now there’s this Alec Baldwin fiasco. The actor was kicked off a plane after he refused to stop playing the popular iPhone game Words With Friends – in response to the situation some are calling Baldwin a gaming addict. Beyond these recent examples there’s the constant talk about shopping, gambling, and collecting (hoarding) as addictions. It seems that anything that offers people an ounce of pleasure will be labeled as an addiction at some point.
What does all of this addiction hysteria have in common though? Perhaps this quote from Jeffrey Schaler Ph.D. can provide some insight:
It takes one person to have a real disease; it takes two people to have a mental illness.
Addiction, like most behaviors portrayed as a brain disease or mental illness, is all about nonconformity with societal and cultural standards on the “sick” person’s part -accompanied by judgment and control from another party. Thus, it takes two people to have an addiction. Just take a look at the Dear Abby case:
Dear Abby:
I have heard of interventions for drug and alcohol addicts. Could I stage one for my daughter “Aileen’s” addiction to texting on her cellphone and Facebook?
She and our grandson live with us because her marriage broke up. I am becoming the boy’s default mother because Aileen is constantly texting or spending hours on Facebook. She’ll say, “I have to send a quick message,” then reappear an hour later. By then, we have fed our grandson and changed his diaper.
…she says her work requires this constant communication, but I know it doesn’t. There have been times when Aileen’s feelings have been hurt because her son doesn’t want to go someplace with her and prefers to stay with us instead. I suspect that he feels ignored when he’s with her because her thumb is constantly flying across her phone.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do not mean to dismiss the mother’s claims as invalid, a problem is a problem, but this example should be instructive. Whenever a pattern of behavior is classified as an addiction, there are two parties involved. One party (in this case a mother) judges the other party’s (the daughter) behavior as “sick” because it doesn’t fit their expectations of proper behavior.
To see what I mean, imagine for a moment that Aileen had moved in with her lonely childless aunt. The aunt jumps at the opportunity to behave motherly, she doesn’t mind the burden (or even see it as a burden) at all. The living situation works out great, Aileen continues her social networking but still finds quality time with her son, the aunt enjoys helping out, there are no complaints, no letters to Dear Abby, and thus no “addiction.” In addiction, the “addict’s” behavior simply clashes with the expectations of those who proclaim it as sick.
In the Alec Baldwin case, he complained that he was singled out – so in the end he seems to have chosen a video game and his own pride and liberty over compliance with what he considered to be a silly rule and unfair treatment. Some observers like the UK newspaper, The Independent, disapprove of his choice, thus call it an addiction. Others, like Gawker, are more sympathetic:
Going overseas, as Baldwin suggests, can net travelers more liberty with how they use their digital devices; Kazakhstan’s Air Astana, for example, is basically a free for all, while American, United and US Air have all thrown people off their planes in phoning incidents.
… reason is his ally when it comes to forbidden iPhone indulgence. Without a single reported accident involving interference from an electronic device, the FAA justifies its gadget lockdown by citing an inconclusive 2006 study.
So in Kazakhstan Baldwin’s behavior would’ve been acceptable, he wouldn’t have been thrown off the plane, and nobody would be labeling him as an addict – but because he didn’t conform with our society’s arbitrary standards, he’s somehow sick.
CBS News was also quick to label Baldwin’s choices as indicative of mental illness, yet they still happily quoted his spokesman who said:
He loves ‘Words with Friends’ so much that he was willing to leave a plane for it
Now isn’t that a much simpler explanation than ascribing the behavior to a mysterious illness which can’t be identified with a blood test, tissue sample, culture, and leaves no traces which can be found in an autopsy? What’s labeled as addiction is simply a volitional value based judgment which other people disagree with.
I submit to you that every so-called addiction takes two parties to become an issue, even if the other party is society. The labeling party simply doesn’t approve of the “addicted” party’s choices. They don’t understand it, they wouldn’t do it themselves, it doesn’t fit with what they think is normal, thus they assume it must be a sickness.
Although I am personally deeply disturbed by images of dead cats under piles of garbage in someone’s home shown on the popular new shows about “hoarding”, which is labeled as a disease, and portrayed similarly to addiction – I can’t help but be skeptical of classifying it as an illness. One episode had me more disturbed about the labelers than the so-called hoarder. The subject of the show was a man who collected a lot of antiques and rare objects, including a massive collection of rare beer cans – and stored all of it in his home. His relatives and the show’s experts were so intent on removing what they saw as nothing more than “clutter” from his home – but not for any apparent safety reasons or presence of hazard. It appeared that they simply disapproved – and apparently they quite literally valued his stuff differently than he valued it (and isn’t such value in collectibles an obviously subjective matter anyway?). Then, when they start forcibly throwing stuff out, which in this case was valuable stuff, the guy gets angry and belligerent and cries. These scenes are dramatically cut to appear as signs of actual mental illness, but wouldn’t you be pissed if people started calling you sick and throwing out your valuable collections? The man in that episode simply didn’t conform to the domestic standards of his relatives and visiting mental health gestapo – he didn’t live up to accepted norms.
But if the “addict” (or hoarder, i.e. collecting addict) had no one else’s norms to contend with, they would just be. They would do what they do, and reap the benefits or consequences of it. Aileen would split her attention between social networking and her son to the degree that she saw fit – and when she judges that she should alter the balance of attention, then she would do so – because as it stands now, she sees no reason to alter that balance. We don’t know how she would behave if she’d moved in with the aunt, or perhaps if she’d moved into a small studio apartment. What we do know, is that she moved in with her mother, and conducts her life in a particular way in that particular situation – which her mother clearly disapproves of. Does her behavior and this disagreement warrant a medical diagnosis?
Of course, all “addictions” are diagnosed behaviorally – even substance addictions. Society sets a norm for engagement in certain behaviors, and when someone doesn’t conform to the norm, they’re considered addicted. The APA’s criteria for a diagnosis of Alcohol Dependence is all about failing to conform to their view of proper alcohol use. The Alcohol Abuse criteria are even more so based on clashing with someone else’s view of proper alcohol use – a point which is clearest in this example: if you’ve ever had “arguments with spouse about consequences of intoxication” even one time – then you’ve now officially got the sickness of Alcohol Abuse. The interpersonal argument, your clash with another person, whether deserved or not, whether right or wrong, is enough to win you the clinical label of “alcohol abuser.”
It takes two people to have a mental illness.
I submit to you that calling any pattern of substance use (no matter how extreme) a literal “illness” (i.e. disease of addiction), is just as silly and nonsensical as attributing Alec Baldwin’s recent run-in with a flight attendant the result of an “illness.” Baldwin made choices which didn’t conform with someone else’s standards, and that is all he did. You may question his choices (I don’t – I applaud them), you may disapprove, but you’re really mentally ill 😉 if you portray them as part of a sickness!
But now you might say “this guy is full of it, addiction is a real disease, it changes the brain.” And, you would be wrong. Doing anything intensely and repeatedly enough changes the brain. That is how a normally functioning human brain works, i.e. there is no physiological malfunction, i.e. there is literally no disease. Driving a taxi causes brain changes – is taxi driving therefore a disease? To go in depth on this issue, please read Addiction is Not a Brain Disease, It is a Choice.
There are no real addictions – just un-accepted behavior which is then fallaciously pathologized.
I would say that addiction is real, and people can be addicted to things, based on the literal definition of the term. (Just Google it.) I agree with the mindset and direction of damn near everything on this site, but would caution the downplay of addiction existing. (And if that is not what you are trying to do, then some of your writing is a bit misleading with the ” ” and such.) I simply think the message should stay away from from “there are no addicts” and focus on “addiction is not a disease.” This blog seems to muddy the waters between those thoughts.
The real problem is that the “addiction is a disease” rhetoric has now taken such a strong hold that people associate that word with “illness.” In fact, this article is not helping that. The word “addict” is not at fault – after all, there has to be some word to describe a dependence or need or harmful habit, even if it can be boiled down to choice. Consider the connotation associated with “feminism.” Is feminism bad? No, it is good. But the word itself has taken on new meaning in people’s minds (thinking of butch women trying to fight the man, etc. This is not really feminism). Feminism isn’t bad, but the connotation about it is. If feminism were called “gender equalism” or something of the like, that would help.
The goal should be to separate the term “addict” from the medical/disease realm, but not to say that addition itself is a fallacy. There are just “okay” addictions (facebook, beer can collecting, games, fantasy football, posting replies on blogs) and harmful addictions (alcohol, drugs, violence, dead cat hoarding, etc.). The “okay” addictions fit your description of “just outside the norm, takes two to tango, etc.” But the harmful ones need to be addressed to protect those addicted and those whom could be harmed by them – and there is no shame in that. It is okay for society to have norms, and for people to disagree with them – it’s the American way.
Joe – You’re definitely understanding me correctly. I don’t think that addiction (as we know it) exists. Although the term can be used in a few different senses, the concept it represents at this point is harmful in my opinion. I only use it out of convenience – if this was “The Clean Slate Problematic Substance Use Site” then I wouldn’t show up enough in search engines, people wouldn’t find my site, and my message would be lost. I want to effect a change in thinking about addiction, thus I must use the term to some degree.
The Webster’s definition for addiction has the term “compulsive” all over it – that’s the exact part of the concept which I most disagree with. If that weren’t part of the concept of addiction, and we were just using the term to describe a destructive habit, it would have some value, but when the term is so infused with powerlessness, compulsion, and lack of choice, it simply becomes harmful.
To say that one has an addiction is to say that one can’t choose otherwise. It is to be saddled with a boogieman. It makes addiction into something much more than it truly is: a series of choices which can end abruptly when someone sees that they have better options. Consider this – when a teen keeps injuring himself skateboarding, we call him foolish – when he keeps injuring himself with drugs or alcohol, we call it addiction. Both have clear risks, tradeoffs, costs, and downsides which most people can quickly become fully aware of – yet people continue these behaviors even after they’ve proven troublesome. Conceptually, I don’t see a difference between these patterns of behavior. The main difference is that our culture is under the belief that one is a volitional act, while the other isn’t.
Addiction isn’t a single choice, and it’s not an irreversible chain of events like the opening of a floodgate. If anything it’s more like a dance, which takes continual effort and choice to sustain. That is, a dance only exists as long as you keep moving your feet and shaking your hips. Occasionally one may get lost in a dance, and keep it going rather mindlessly, but when they realize they’ve got somewhere better to be or something better to do, or they just get bored or tired of it, then they’ll do something different.
There is another issue which is maybe too much to get into, but your comments poke at it – who’s to say whether the behavior in question is actually worth it to the actor? Every day of our lives, in everything we do, we pay a price of some kind. When you watch TV, you forego other more productive behaviors you might have engaged in, when you ride in a car you risk death and injury, etc – but with each choice we’re essentially saying “this is worth the price.” Substance users are saying that whatever effects they get from the substance are worth the price to them. If they didn’t think it was worth the price, then they would do something else with their time. There are many things people do which I clearly do not want to do, and would not be willing to pay the price for, but who am I to label a given behavior as an addiction just because I disagree with it?
For example, you may think posting comments online is harmless, meanwhile I’m sure I’ve lost friends over some of the controversial comments I’ve posted online, and it has been a destructive habit for me. Ultimately, I decided I value speaking my mind and staying true to my own judgment more than I value friends who would disown me because we disagree on this or that political or philosophical issue. I certainly know people who have decided that they’d rather keep quiet about controversial issues so that they may get ahead by social means. Who’s right? They’re happy paying the price of stifling themselves for social advancement; I’m happy paying the price of alienation from some groups of friends in exchange for personal integrity. If we’re both doing what makes us happy, then we’re both contextually right in our actions. Likewise, if someone believes that spending all of their disposable income at the bar every night is their best option for happiness, and is worth more to them than other things they could be doing, who am I to say they’re wrong?
My approach to helping people with substance use is to teach them that they are in control of every choice they make; to be sure they know that they’re choosing what they believe is their best option at that moment in time; and if they suspect they may want to change, I give them a method for expanding their range of options so that they might find some other lifestyle to be a better option. If they believe their time can be better spent elsewhere, then they will do it. This is helpful, it gets to the root of the choices – having a condition called addiction doesn’t help, and in my opinion, simply distracts from the real issue of choices.
When I use the CBE teaching method in the St Jude Program, the word addiction is completely struck from my vocabulary.
I appreciate the quick and robust response! And I offer my opinion because I believe in what you are saying, so I hope my thoughts are well-recevied here… I guess, as someone who just stumbled upon this site yesterday, I found myself, as I said, reading much and agreeing with most everything. I personally have never had a problematic substance use issue, but have a couple family members who have. In addition, I have been around people who use the “disease of addition” lingo a lot, and even without any education on the subject, I knew that mindset really rubbed me the wrong way.
So, becuase I like what is going on with this site, I guess the nitpicking about the phrasing and use of words like addition caught me off guard, and felt at a glance counter-productive. The points that focus on choice and focus on choice being the main factor of ceasing problematic actions are what really work (to me). My example would be, it is much better to say this: “AA works for some people not because an illness is cured, but because their minds are opened up to making better choices.” Than this: “AA is wrong and bad.” Yes, their philosophy may be flawed, but to say that it has not helped some people, if only to make better choices, would be incorrect.
If the goal of this site is to cease self-destuctive behaviors through the education of choice, then it is noble. If the goal is to prove “I’m right, you’re wrong,” then people with opposing views will simply ignore the message. It can be a combination of both, but “society” is a tough audience, and I just hope that the people who get something out of your information aren’t only people who already agree with you. Through appealing to a more diverse audience, I think the message can develop stronger legs.
*use of words like addiCtion
One more thought – isn’t compulsion from the word “compel”? I don’t associate someone being compelled to do things as not having a choice, but the literal definitions seem to be somewhere between “strong urge” to “habitual” to “forced to do,” so again that is muddy. Either way, if not “addiction,” then there needs to be some word that fits for continued, habitual choice to repeat an action regardless of harmful effects. What might that be?