Augustine poignantly discussed his personal struggles to overcome his two most overwhelming addictions – to romantic love and to social status – in his Confessions. 140-150).Įight centuries after Plato, St. He could have mentioned drugs if he saw them as important in this scenario, since hallucinogenic drugs were used ritualistically in ancient Greece (Plato, 375BC/1987, 571d-515a Alexander, 2010, pp. He was most concerned with addictions to power, sex, raucous revelry, and violence rather than addictions to alcohol or drugs, although he did mention drunkenness along with the other addictive possibilities. For example, Plato showed, in his Republic (558c-576c), how severe addictions, which he called “master passions,” can play a central role in the political degeneration of chaotic democratic city-states into murderous tyrannies. Throughout history, thinkers have viewed addiction very broadly, and called it by a great variety of names. Some Classic Views of Addiction in Western Civilization For this presentation, I have also drawn heavily from recent books about the environmental crisis, particularly those of Thomas Berry (2009) and Naomi Klein (2014). Many, many other researchers have contributed evidence that gave rise to the historical view over the decades (e.g., Chein, Gerard, Lee, & Rosenfeld, 1964 Reinarman and Levine, 1997 Tester & Kulchyski, 1994 Homer-Dixon, 2006 Maté, 2008, 2015 Hart, 2013). I have summarized the voluminous academic evidence for the historical way of looking at addictions in two recent books, The Globalization of Addiction: A study in poverty of the spirit (Alexander, 2010) and A History of Psychology in Western Civilization (Alexander & Shelton, 2014), and elsewhere (Alexander, 2014). But that is not tonight’s topic.įor tonight it is enough to simply leave the Official View in the background while using the historical view of addiction as a window through which we can more clearly see the environmental crisis in relationship to global capitalism. This critical outlook on the Official View has abundant support in the professional addiction literature (e.g., Alexander, 2010, 2014 Peele & Brodsky, 1975 Heyman, 2003 Hart, 2013 Satel & Lilienfeld, 2013, chap. I believe that the Official View will eventually be seen as one of several dead ends in modern society’s futile attempt to medicalize its way out of its social and emotional problems. I am relegating the Official View to the background because I am one of many addiction researchers who have concluded that the Official View does not fit with observations of addicted human beings in the real world and is, therefore, not a useful part of a broad understanding of addiction. However, I will leave the Official View almost completely out of the discussion tonight. I have also lectured about the Official View of Addiction to psychology students in brain and behaviour courses over many decades. I have researched this Official View in my own rat laboratory at Simon Fraser University where my colleagues and I conducted the “Rat Park” experiments, which you may have run across. This doctrine, which I call the “Official View of Addiction,” originated in the 19th century, was elaborated and expanded by the medical neuroscience of the late 20th century, and persists in the 21st (Alexander, 2014). Some people in the room may be surprised that I am not describing addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disease caused by exposure of genetically predisposed people to addictive drugs. These times and places had other deadly serious problems of course, but addiction was not among them. At many times and places, addiction has been a relatively uncommon problem and probably not even an interesting topic of conversation. Many people – including myself – believe that we are facing exactly that kind of a ruinous situation today (e.g., McMurtry, 2013).Īlthough addiction has been known since antiquity, it has waxed and waned over the centuries. At the worst of times, mass addiction has been seen more broadly as a factor the downfall of cultures, city-states, and empires (Alexander & Shelton, 2014, chaps. Throughout pre-modern times, addiction to riches, power, sexual lust, drunken revelry, social status, gluttony, opium and many other habits were recognized as deadly pitfalls for the human soul.
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