It Should Be Obvious That Literally Everything Is Chemically Addictive
How the mainstream view of addiction gets it wrong
I used to take diphenhydramine to fall asleep every night. It is an over-the-counter antihistamine used to treat common allergies and mild insomnia. For years, I felt anxious if I didn’t have it on hand because I knew that without it I would have a much harder time falling asleep. I still smirk at the line on the bottle that reads “non-habit forming.” I absolutely formed a habit of using it. There are many purportedly “non-habit forming” things that become habits and even addictions.
The mainstream understanding of addiction is corrupted by dualism, which is the old idea that you simultaneously exist “inside” a human body and “outside” of it in some immaterial way. Dualism perpetuates the widely-held belief that certain things are “chemically addictive” while others are addictive in some alternative way. Some addictions are regarded as inherently “physical” (bodily, neurological, etc.) while others are seen as “mental” (psychological, behavioral, etc.).
For instance, people often think injecting heroin involves a special kind of neurochemical reaction that gambling doesn’t. Quitting “chemically addictive” things like heroin after frequent use is thought to present a much greater threat than quitting things in the alternative “non-chemical” class. Gambling is not commonly thought of as “chemically addictive.” To subscribers of the mainstream view, gambling addictions form through vague processes that are somehow unmediated, or less mediated, by neurochemistry than injecting heroin. They are thought to be easier and less dangerous to quit.
Every part of the mainstream view is wrong. It ignores that every activity we engage in involves our neurochemistry. Every activity we perform entails neurological changes. Behaviors involving external chemicals are as chemical as behaviors that do not involve external chemicals because our brain’s neurochemistry is equally implicated in both. Every thought is a neurochemical event.
As people like Johann Hari have eloquently pointed out, the idea that addiction can be understood solely at the chemical level runs contrary to overwhelming historical and scientific evidence. Many American soldiers in Vietnam, for instance, used heroin routinely before “magically” stopping cold turkey when they arrived home without notable withdrawal symptoms. This is only “magical” (impossible) under the dualist conception of addiction. It shouldn’t be possible for people to stop “chemically addictive” things without “chemical problems.” Yet most people who try hard drugs once do not become habitual users. If that were the case, there would be vastly more hard drug addicts. In the famous Rat Park experiments, rats in the fun and social playpen with access to a “chemically addictive” drug, morphine water, only used the drug occasionally. They spent most of their time playing and mating with other rats. Meanwhile, rats in lonely and boring cages opted for the drugged water almost all the time.
Natural experiments like the Vietnam War and scientific experiments like the Rat Park studies demonstrate the importance of personal context in addiction formation. In other words, a thing’s addiction potential for you depends considerably on your conceptualization of and expectations for the thing, your interpersonal relationships, the degree to which you desire to escape your responsibilities in life, and other personal factors. Importantly, all these personal factors are manifested biologically (hormonally, neurologically, gastrointestinally, etc.). Conceptualizations, expectations, relationships, feelings of existential dread, and the like all instantiate in patterns of biological activity. Where else would these things manifest?
The effects of any particular thing for someone are a function of the interaction between their personal context and the composition of the thing. It is totally impossible to reverse engineer specific products of these interactions. There is no way to say that a specific addiction outcome is X% personal context and Y% the object of addiction because the outcome is qualitatively different than either ingredient. An addiction is a personal relationship and, as such, it is more than the sum of its parts and irreducible to its ingredients.
I am pointing to a cold bottle of Modelo Negra. Is this beer addictive? Is it “habit-forming?” Is it “chemically addictive?” The answer to all these questions is that it obviously depends. Are you a recovering alcoholic? If so, then probably. If not, then perhaps. What about this slot machine, pornography website, topic of gossip, video game, job, person, or self-critical thought? The same rule applies. You can become chemically addicted to anything because everything you interact with creates neurochemical reactions whose specific nature in the moment depends on your embodied autobiography. Addiction potential always depends on personal context. This equally applies to things like marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. Countless people receive hard drugs intravenously at the hospital and then never crave them after being discharged.
It should be obvious that everything is chemically addictive. Whether someone is likely to become addicted to something always depends upon who they are. There are so many strange people in this world addicted to totally unexpected things. Some people get addicted to water and drown themselves to death by drinking too much of it. If water is habit forming, so is diphenhydramine and everything else marketed as “non-habit forming” or portrayed as “not chemically addictive.” The effects of a thing can’t be separated from who the person using it is. People get confused because we discuss “the effects of things” as though things have the same effects for all people, but this is often not the case because people are unique. Addiction is not objective, but transjective. It emerges from the interaction of subjective and objective.
The mainstream dualist view is primarily perpetuated by two powerful forces: the pharmaceutical industry and short-termism.
Pharmaceutical companies push the falsehood that the effects of a drug are attributable to its objective chemical composition. They say drugs impact everyone the same because, according to them, the substance alone objectively determines its effects regardless of personal context. Conveniently, the supposedly “objective effects” are all desirable and therefore marketable outcomes, and any undesirable outcomes are represented as idiosyncratic “side effects.” This way drug companies can suggest their medications are “not addictive.” When people get addicted, it’s not the drug’s fault, but the fault of their individuality. This boosts sales and decreases liability.
I am not anti-medication. I want all available drugs legalized and regulated by the government so people can try them if they want. Drugs are useful for many people in many different types of situations. However, I despise universalism or the idea that every person is equal in some way. Drugs may have common effects in a population, but that by no means guarantees that you, a unique individual, will experience those common effects. Pharmaceutical companies push medical universalism for money. They stand to make more revenue if everyone is the same.
Pharmaceutical marketers are cunning in how they exploit people’s short-termism. People generally crave “quick fixes” for complex problems. Most hate longer-term solutions because they require discipline. They don’t want to be responsible for what happens to them because then they may have to face how pathetic they are and that would suck. They want assurance from the gods that a potential solution to their complicated problem will not impact them negatively, regardless of the context in which it is implemented. They want to be able to blame the gods, or anyone but themselves, if things go awry. Drug companies are happy to profit off people’s childish desire for godlike certainty and personal irresponsibility. These weak qualities are symptoms of short-termism, they betray an avoidance of the long-term future.
You can quickly see modern confusion about addiction by asking people what the opposite of addiction is. Do you know?
Some consider habit, but then correctly realize that addiction is a type of habit. People can’t identify what the opposite of addiction is because they haven’t clearly identified what addiction is. The dictionary definition of addiction is “the state of being compulsively committed to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.”
Once you discard the untenable distinction between psychological and physical and factor in that everything is addictive, the definition simplifies to “the state of being compulsively committed to something to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.” You don’t know whether you are addicted to something until you lose it. You never know what you have until it’s gone. If its cessation causes trauma, does that mean it is bad? People are often severely traumatized when loved ones to whom they feel deeply obliged (compulsively committed) unexpectedly die or abandon them. Does this mean their close relationships with these loved ones are addictions and their relational trauma is withdrawal? Yes, by definition it does.
Everything we deeply love is an addiction because to lose love is to experience the trauma of a broken strong commitment. When we choose our loves, we choose our addictions and our potential traumas. Life is the adventure of deciding what is worth being addicted to, risking trauma for, dying for. The opposite of addiction is apathy because addiction is the medical term for love. If you aren’t addicted to anything, then you are disconnected from everything. Trauma is the potential cost of every fateful decision and every big commitment because it is the medical term for tragedy.
Tragedy creates the hero, one who is so compulsively committed, or devoted, to his mission that its cessation means either death or new life in a changed world, the latter of which entails a traumatic death of identity. The hero is addicted to living purposefully and is therefore highly potentially traumatic/tragic. The hero loves life.
What is your heroic mission? What are you addicted to? What are you living for? What are you choosing to love in your life? Since literally everything is chemically addictive, these are all the same question.